You Do Backups, But Are You Covered?
When you set up your SQL Server backups, it’s a great feeling to go and see the nice BAK, DIFF, TRN backups accumulating in your storage system (you do check to make sure they’re happening, right?)
But there is much more to rebuilding a system that has failed in a big way. If your server dies entirely, you need to be able to rebuild it, restore your systems to full functionality and be on your way as quickly as possible. Here are a few things to make sure you’re grabbing/documenting/backing up –
– Your systems-level configuration – what version of Windows are you running, what service packs have been applied? This can be important because it can influence the other software versions on your system. You’ll want to make sure you can rebuild "as-is" – the last thing you need to be worrying about in an emergency is doing an OS upgrade on top of the recovery.
– What third-party software do you have – what are the keys? Is the software locked to the computer name, IP or machine name? If any of the "locks" are in place, do you know how to request updated keys if you have to move the software to a new system? What is the delay in getting those replacement keys?
– Have you backed up your encryption keys and stored them elsewhere? Do you know how to reapply whatever encryption and protection systems you have in place to a new server to bring it online and make information available?
– What is the physical configuration of the system? You’ll likely want to rebuild a similar machine to make bringing things back online easiest. Drive size and configurations, location of files (databases, backups, supporting files) are all important.
– What OS-level accounts and permissions do you have set up? You’ll have to rebuild this possibly if you bring things back online. Are there any application roles or permissions that have to be rebuilt?
– Any tasks that run that will need to be rebuilt, rescheduled, put back into place? This can be especially dangerous if you have SQL Agent jobs – they’re outside the scope of your database, so if you’re just doing single database backups, but have these jobs that you rely on, you’ll need them to be scripted out and ready to rebuild.
There is more, we’ll revisit this going forward as it’s also impacted by options you have in the cloud. What types of things to backup, HOW to back them up, the process of restoring. It’s extremely important to know and understand before you need it.
What other items do you recommend? Comment below…. Let me know.