Perform regular restores on a dev/test box using the FULL and TLOG
backups, have these full and tlog backups backed-up to tape regulary.

Only when you can regularly restore these, do you know that your DR plan
is safe. Don't try to backup mdf/ldf while "in-use".



-----Original Message-----
From: Dinh Tuan
[mailto:mssqldba-ezmlmshield-x838450.[Email address protected]
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2007 12:37 PM
To: LazyDBA Discussion
Subject: Backing up database files
Importance: Low

We are taking backups of backup files (.bak) and transaction logs (.trn)
however, we are not backing up the data files (*.mdf) and log files
(*.ldf) because the system team feel that backups of live datafiles
(similar to the oracle world) are useless for recovery (unless the
dataprotector backup agent and the database are working together to
quiesce/flush/freeze the files during the file pull. Hence to save on
virtual tape real-estate, we do not back the datafiles up. Rather, we
are grabbing only the backup directory and all the log directories.

If we need to do a restore, we can use the full database backup and
apply the transaction logs to recover to a specific point in time. My
questions are: are we in any danger if let's say the one of the data
files or log files is corrupted? Can we use the full database and
transaction logs to restore from if this happens? If the database files
and log files are in use by the database, can we still use Data
Protector to backup these files? Any suggestions would be greatly
appreciated. Thanks!

Tuan Dinh
SQL Server DBA
Marquette University
Office: (414) 288-7635
Cell: (414) 313-8535
tuan.[Email address protected]



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