SQL maintenance is a lifecycle, not an event!

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You’ve heard me talk about this many times, in so many different ways, but it’s worth repeating: SQL maintenance lifecycles are important.

People who disagree, disagree because they spend too much time firefighting and don’t have time to really think about it.  Don’t know anything about SQL maintenance lifecycles? Let’s touch on a couple of points…today, we’ll cover SQL backup.

SQL maintenance lifecycles: Backups

Backups have the biggest lifecycles of all, because the uses for backup files are so varied.

They’re used for restoring databases to the original server, sure.  But here’s a short list of the other kinds of things you need to do with backup files:

  • Restore to development, QA, etc.
  • Send to vendor
  • Initialize replication
  • Initialize Availability Groups
  • Restore to a secondary server to run CheckDB

A backup is not a single event

A database backup isn’t a single event.  But unfortunately, nearly every vendor out there – and most DBAs – treat backups as a single event that has a start and a finish.  “Look, I took a SQL backup and produced a file, and now I’m finished!”  But that’s not remotely the case.  We use and shuffle SQL backup files around all day and all week long on our various servers.

This is why I’m so against those tools that I call “network backup tools”.  You know the ones: Backup Exec, AppAssure, etc.  Your network admin loves those tools, because he doesn’t understand SQL and he wants the same backup utility for the whole shop.

But network backup tools simply aren’t going to cut it for SQL maintenance lifecycles, because they take snapshots of the data and log files.  And quite often those two files aren’t fully synchronized when the snapshot takes place, so you wind up creating a new log file and losing whatever data was in there.  Not only that, but you can only attach those files somewhere, usually on the same server they came from.

Without the understanding that your maintenance has a lifecycle, you wind up with a lot of piecemeal solutions.  You write something to restore a database on a development box, then another DBA does the same thing, then another, then another.  Soon you have a huge mix of solutions that need support, all created by a mix of DBAs over the years…it’s an unmanageable web of solutions, each one with its own quirks and limitations.  That’s no way to run a shop, and it’s no way to support your data.

SQL Maintenance Lifecycles: SQL backup done right

Minion BackupThis is why we’ve made Minion Backup the way we have.  Minion Backup is the only backup tool on the market that treats your environment holistically.  Minion Backup understands your SQL maintenance lifecycle and it works for you to provide you built-in solutions that you just deploy.  There’s no need to write your own processes, or manage something separate because it’s built into Minion Backup by default.

Let’s take for instance that you need to back up your SQL certificates, because you know, who doesn’t?  With Minion Backup you can easily backup every certificate, even to multiple locations.  In fact, you can back up your certificates to as many locations as you need.  This functionality is built into Minion Backup, and setting it up is a simple table setting.

Not only that, but since we store the private key password encrypted, and give it to you in the log, you can even rotate the private key passwords on any schedule you like to increase your security.  This way if you change the private key password every month, then you’ve always got access to the encrypted value in the log so you can restore that certificate with ease.  This is what we mean by SQL maintenance lifecycle management.  All of our SQL maintenance products have this level of lifecycle management.  And we’re improving them all the time.  We work closely with our users to give them built-in solutions that matter.

All of our SQL maintenance products are completely FREE, so download them and try them now.  And if you like what you see, then try our enterprise products and see the power of bringing your SQL maintenance lifecycles into the enterprise architecture.

Download our FREE maintenance modules below:

  • Minion Backup: Free SQL Server Backup utility with world-class enterprise features and full lifecycle management.
  • Minion Reindex: Free SQL Server Reindex utility with unmatched configurability.
  • Minion CheckDB: Free SQL Server CHECKDB that solves all of your biggest CHECKDB problems.