Backup & Recovery from First Principles: Series Contents

An 11-part series on how SQL Server backup and restore work, with measured demos.

A woman turns a large brass dial beside a curving chain of linked glass capsules, each holding a glowing database cylinder.

It starts with recovery models and what each backup type contains, then follows the log chain and the ways people break it. Later parts cover copy-only backups, restore sequences and STOPAT, piecemeal and page-level restores, backup verification, backup throughput tuning, encryption and TDE, and the service and database master keys that restores depend on.

  1. Backup & Recovery from First Principles, Part 1: Recovery Models Actually Explained
  2. Backup & Recovery from First Principles, Part 2: Anatomy of a Backup
  3. Backup & Recovery from First Principles, Part 3: The Log Chain and How People Break It
  4. Backup & Recovery from First Principles, Part 4: Copy-Only Backups, the Chain-Safe Snapshot
  5. Backup & Recovery from First Principles, Part 5: Restore Sequences and the STOPAT Rewind
  6. Backup & Recovery from First Principles, Part 6: Piecemeal Restores - Online Before It’s All Back
  7. Backup & Recovery from First Principles, Part 7: Page-Level Restore - Fixing 8 KB Instead of 8 TB
  8. Backup & Recovery from First Principles, Part 8: Verification - Your Backup Job Succeeding Proves Almost Nothing
  9. Backup & Recovery from First Principles, Part 9: BUFFERCOUNT, MAXTRANSFERSIZE, and Friends - Benchmarked
  10. Backup & Recovery from First Principles, Part 10: Backup Encryption and TDE - The Gotchas That Cost You the Restore
  11. Backup & Recovery from First Principles, Part 11: The Keys Nobody Backs Up - SMK, DMK, and a War Story

Questions or corrections are welcome on Bluesky or LinkedIn. See all series on this blog.