This document provides an introduction to recovery and backups for beginners. It discusses having both a backup strategy and a recovery strategy. It also covers key concepts like RTO, RPO, recovery models, and how to match the appropriate recovery model to your backup strategy based on your business needs and data. The document emphasizes that having backups without a recovery plan is inadequate and concludes with an invitation for questions.

1. Recovery and Backups for Beginners
Mike Hillwig
Boston, MA
5/31/201
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2. Mike Hillwig
 SQL Server DBA
 Working with SQL Server since SQL 7
 Senior DBA at hosting division of a financial software
company owned by a large financial institution
 Resume includes Acme Packet Oracle, Shawmut Design
and Construction, Equitable Resources
 Certified in ITIL Foundations

3. Mike Hillwig
 Owned by Two Pugs
 Avid Cook
 Lover of Blue Cheese
 And Bacon
 Geek at Heart

4. Obligatory Social Networking Slide
 mikehillwig.com
 sqlserverpedia.com
 twitter.com/mikehillwig
 anysocialnetworkingsite/mikehillwig

5. Housekeeping
 Slides and scripts at sqlsaturday.com
 Blog post at mikehillwig.com/go/recovery
 Don’t let me talk too fast

6. Beware of the Blogs
 There is some amazing
advice out there. But…
 Anybody can put bad
advice on the internet
 Trust people you know
 Assume I’m an idiot
 I don’t trust people who
say “ALWAYS” or
“NEVER”
 Test everything in your
own test environment
first.

7. Lets talk strategy
 Who has a backup strategy?
 Do you have a recovery strategy?

8. If you have a backup strategy and not a
recovery strategy, you're doing it wrong!

9. Lets talk business
 SLA: Service Level Agreements (with your
customers)
 OLA: Operational Level Agreements (with your
organization)
 RTO: how quickly you need to be recovered
(usually in hours) after a failure
 RPO: how much data loss (usually in minutes) is
acceptable

10. The lower your RTO and RPO, the greater
the cost.

11. Myth Busting
 Backup and Recovery are NOT the same
thing as high availability.
 High Availability (Clustering, Always On) are
a completely different topic.
 Log Shipping is another topic for another day.

12. Recovery Models
 Simple Recovery – Allows us to restore a full
backup.
 Full Recovery
 Allows us to restore a full backup
 Then roll forward transaction log backups
 Stop at a specific point in time
 BULK LOGGED – Similar to Full Recovery,
but we’re not talking about it today.

13. What is the right Recovery Model to Use?
 It depends on your RPO
 It also depends on your data and business
processes

14. Why RPO Matters
 Does your RPO allow you to lose the data
between full backups?
 Probably not.
 But it can happen.

15. Why Your Data and Business Matters
 How many of your databases have data that
doesn’t change between full backups?
 Can your data be recreated from import files
or re-running a process to run data updates?

16. Matching Recovery Models to Backups
 SIMPLE: Regular FULL backups
 FULL:
 Regular FULL backups
 AND frequent transaction log backups
 How frequent? It depends on your RPO.

17. A Word on Log Shipping
 Another form of Backup and Recovery
 Three Step Process
 Backup Transaction Logs
 Copies Transaction Log Backups to Target
 Restores Transaction Log Backups on Target
 Very helpful for Disaster Recovery

18. Had enough theory?

19. Let’s Demo

20. If you have a backup strategy and not a
recovery strategy, you're doing it wrong!

21. Wrap Up
 Slides and blog post at
mikehillwig.com/go/recovery

22. Questions?