Category Archives: SQL Server

Command Line Arguments to Manage an Installation

Assume you need to clone your server and you have an image, for example, an AMI (Amazon Machine Image) in AWS with installed SQLBackupAndFTP Free edition. Once you deploy this image on several servers and apply your license key to activate SQLBackupAndFTP, that license key will be applied to all your servers. When you decide to remove your license from one of the servers, the license will be removed from all of them. Also, you can face the issue that the license will not work if you activate a license for one server on all your cloned servers. Continue reading Command Line Arguments to Manage an Installation

Automating SQL Server Backups on Windows: Why You Need It and How to Do It

A backup is a copy of data taken and stored elsewhere so that you can restore it in case of a database breakdown. The most common causes of a breakdown include the following:

  • Hardware issue: The data in the database can get corrupted due to errors in the physical drives. However, it is not always physical damage to the server from the outside. Disks wear out, resulting in data read and write errors.
  • Software issue: As a rule, data is written to the database by a program, in which errors may occur and lead to data corruption after updates.
  • Human issue: A person with access might unintentionally damage the data. For example, they might delete data that was not supposed to be deleted. ​​
  • Hacker issue: If attackers infiltrate your system, then they will, first of all, encrypt your database and demand a ransom for decryption.

Continue reading Automating SQL Server Backups on Windows: Why You Need It and How to Do It

Scheduled Restore. How to Set Up Log Shipping

Log Shipping is SQL Server technology that is available in both the Standard and Enterprise editions. The technology may be useful in solving the following problems:

  1. Creation of read-only servers to perform heavy SQL queries and reduce the load on the primary server
  2. Creating backup servers that can be quickly put into operation in the case of a primary server failure
  3. Creating a secondary (slave) server, where data is updated with a fixed delay

Continue reading Scheduled Restore. How to Set Up Log Shipping

Solved: [JOB-BAK:2006#11008] Previous Full backup of a database was created with a different application

During the backup you can face the following warning:

[Warning] [JOB-BAK:2006#11008]. The previous full backup of <database name> database was created with a different application (non-SQLBackupAndFTP). You may not able to restore the database automatically using SQLBackupAndFTP.

Continue reading Solved: [JOB-BAK:2006#11008] Previous Full backup of a database was created with a different application

PowerShell how to backup and recover an SQL Server database FAQ

The following article will explain how to backup and restore databases in SQL Server using PowerShell. PowerShell is a very popular shell for operative systems used to automate tasks using the command line and scripts. PowerShell was created by Microsoft in Windows, but now it is supported in Linux and macOS also. Continue reading PowerShell how to backup and recover an SQL Server database FAQ

How to backup Azure SQL Database to Local Machine

Even though Azure SQL Database provides built-in backup, you may still want to create a local copy of your Azure SQL database. This could be handy for example when you want to keep database backup copy for free longer than allowed by Microsoft Azure built-in tools which are usually 7 to 35 days, depending on your service tier. Here we will explain in detail how to backup Azure SQL Database to a Local Machine.

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SQL Server Backup to Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

backblaze logoWith SQLBackupAndFTP you can schedule automatic SQL Server backups and send them to Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage just in a few clicks. Backblaze B2 offers affordable pricing for storing your backups: just $0.005/Gb for storage and $0.02/Gb for download. This is about 3 times cheaper than to store in Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud. Continue reading SQL Server Backup to Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

How to automate SQL Server database backups

The question “How to automate SQL Server database backups” has several answers and here we will review all of the best options. But first, let’s define what SQL Server database backup automation stands for. SQL Server backup automation is a process that includes at least the following steps:

    1. Run SQL Server backup for selected databases on a schedule
    2. Compress & encrypt the backups
    3. Upload the backup to a remote destination – network, NAS, FTP on one of the cloud storages (Dropbox, AWS, OneDrive, SkyDrive, etc..)
    4. Send email notification on backup success or failure

The most popular SQL Server backup automation options that we review here are:

SQLBackupAndFTP
Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio & SQL Server Agent
T-SQL
Ola Hallengren script
or you can just jump straight to the Conclusion

 

Continue reading How to automate SQL Server database backups