Proving the Restore, Part 2: HEADERONLY Changes Shape Between Versions
In I used msdb to find a database whose newest full backup had aged past a week. msdb tells you a backup happened. It doesn’t tell you the file is still readable, or which database…
Proving the Restore, Part 1: The Backup Job Said Success
A maintenance window rebooted a server in the middle of its weekly full backup. The job was killed mid-write, the partial file was discarded, and the next scheduled run was seven days out. Differentials kept…
Backup & Recovery from First Principles, Part 11: The Keys Nobody Backs Up – SMK, DMK, and a War Story
ended the series with a rule: key material is a third artifact class beside data backups and log backups, and it needs its own backup. That post demonstrated the certificate side. This bonus part climbs…
Backup & Recovery from First Principles, Part 10: Backup Encryption and TDE – The Gotchas That Cost You the Restore
Every part of this series so far assumed one thing: if you have the backup file, you can restore it. Encryption changes that deal. An encrypted backup (or any backup of a TDE database) is…
Backup & Recovery from First Principles, Part 9: BUFFERCOUNT, MAXTRANSFERSIZE, and Friends – Benchmarked
The BACKUP statement has a set of tuning knobs most people never touch: BUFFERCOUNT, MAXTRANSFERSIZE, BLOCKSIZE, and striping across multiple files.[1] Advice about them tends to be folklore, so this post is numbers instead: nine…
Backup & Recovery from First Principles, Part 8: Verification – Your Backup Job Succeeding Proves Almost Nothing
ended on an uncomfortable question: the “clean” full backup I used to repair a corrupted page – how did I know it was clean? This part demonstrates, with a deliberately corrupted database, exactly how little…