Microsoft SQL backup

What Is Microsoft SQL Backup?

Microsoft (MS) SQL backup is the process of ensuring you have complete and protected copies of all the data stored in your production Microsoft SQL Server databases. These copies should be kept on a different system, and preferably in a different physical location.

A MS SQL backup solution will protect SQL Server databases and their corresponding log files, and enable database-level recovery anywhere, anytime. The goal of having a MS SQL Server backup solution is to meet your organization’s data retention, data privacy, and strategic requirements while providing support for dev/test and ensuring compliance mandates are being met cost-effectively.

Why Is Microsoft SQL Backup Important?

Today, enterprises depend on Microsoft SQL Server for a broad range of essential business functions, which makes choosing the right backup solution a critical decision. The goal is to protect the data stored on Microsoft SQL Servers against data loss and against long-term outages, both of which can incur significant financial and productivity costs.

Unfortunately, many backup products only partially protect MS SQL Server against data loss. In contrast, complete data management solutions provide comprehensive protection for MS SQL Server, while also allowing SQL Servers to be instantly recovered and brought back online in the event of a natural disaster or loss of data.

MS SQL backup is even more important because of recent database trends that raise additional challenges:

• Data growth – Increasing volumes of structured data is raising the cost and difficulty of backing up MS SQL Servers.
• Regulatory changes – Compliance mandates such as HIPAA, GDPR, and PCI are making MS SQL backups more complex. A backup solution needs to comply with ever-changing regulations and enable businesses to respond agilely to audits.
• Increasing costs – The more data teams have to back up, the more a business has to pay for bandwidth, storage, and data management. Leading MS SQL backup solutions can minimize these costs.
• Lagging performance – As data grows, it takes longer to do backups, and performance can become degraded. A SQL backup solution must mitigate anything that has a negative effect on performance.
• More complex environments – Data can reside anywhere, in any cloud or on-premises. Backup solutions must allow IT teams to manage protection with a simple, single UI across public, private, and hybrid environments in addition to on-prem.

How Do I Back Up Microsoft SQL Server?

You back up Microsoft SQL Server by making a copy of your database and saving it to a backup file. If you want, you can then move the MS SQL backup to another computer or to the cloud. You need to ensure you have enough capacity available at your target location. You can use deduplication and compression to significantly reduce the size of your backup file.

This backup will be essential if something happens to your MS SQL database. If a table becomes corrupt, or you lose a database completely, you will be able to access and reload the data from this backup. That’s why it’s critical to test your backups to ensure that they are recoverable, and will be accessible when you need them.

There are three different types of MS SQL backups:

• Full backup – This is a complete copy of everything in the database, and it serves as a foundation for other backup types. From a full backup you should be able to recover the database as well as part of the transaction log.
• Differential backup – This type of backup contains all the changes that were made to the database since the most recent full backup. Its size depends on the size and number of changes that have been made. The advantage to this is a quicker recovery time, requiring only a full backup and the last differential backup to restore the entire Microsoft SQL database.
• Transaction logs backup – This type of backup copies the transaction logs, which contain the whole history of modifications to the MS SQL database. If you need to recover a database to a certain point in time, you can use this type of backup.

How Do I Automatically Back Up a SQL Database?

Leading data management vendors with solutions that support database protection allow you to back up your MS SQL databases automatically with a single, software-defined solution that is simple, smart, and secure.

How Does SQL Backup Work?

Legacy backup products store each incremental backup as a delta from the previous backup. This creates long, breakable chains and requires time-consuming consolidation to facilitate a recovery. In contrast, a modern solution can instantly recover databases and VMs from any backup because all full and incremental backups are stored in the same format as in the original environment.

Where Are SQL Backups Stored?

When teams choose a modern data management solution, they can store SQL backups on-prem or in any cloud. These backups are immutable, meaning they cannot be accessed by external systems or users.

How Do I Back Up All SQL Databases at Once?

A MS SQL solution from a data management leader allows you to back up all your SQL databases at once with a single, software-defined platform that is simple, secure, and intelligent. You can create instant zero-cost clones without touching the production database. You can give your developers and test teams access to high-fidelity database data in seconds—all without additional infrastructure overhead.

How Do I Find My Backup Schedule in SQL Server?

With a modern data management solution, backup schedules are part of a protection policy.

Can I Back Up Microsoft SQL to a Network Drive?

A modern enterprise solution for MS SQL Server will allow backup data to be stored in a number of storage types including cloud, local disks, and tape.

How Do I Find MS SQL Server Backup Files?

With a modern solution for backup, you can use instant global search to find your MS SQL Server backup files.

Cohesity and MS SQL Backup

No one ever imagines that a disastrous situation will occur, but having a plan is imperative. Organizations choosing Cohesity for Microsoft SQL backup can now achieve near-instant recovery time objectives (RTOs) for mission-critical production databases. When human or naturally occurring disasters happen, or a complete database failure causes downtime that will have a significant impact on the organization, rapid recovery of core databases is critical.

In fact, the ability of an enterprise to recover from a data disaster can make or break the future success of the business. Here are the many ways Cohesity’s data protection solution for Microsoft SQL Server stands apart from other products:

• Hands-free, incremental forever backups – Your organization can define backup policies based on your unique requirements, such as SLAs and compliance needs, and effortlessly protect and manage data. Native SQL Server backups coupled with rapid performance allow you to meet demanding SLAs and improve infrastructure efficiency, at any scale.
• Comprehensive protection against ransomware attacks – Backup is your last line of defense against sophisticated and crippling ransomware attacks. Cohesity’s comprehensive anti-ransomware solution protects, isolates, detects, and most importantly, allows you to rapidly recover your Microsoft SQL Server data to reduce downtime and ensure business continuity.
• Zero-cost clones for dev/test – You can speed up application development while meeting compliance requirements by giving your developers access to high-quality data, on demand. Leverage existing SQL backup data to instantly provision zero-cost clones. Combined with self-service provisioning and data refresh, developers and test teams can get products and services to market faster, giving your business a competitive edge.