Learn About Microsoft SQL Server Disaster Recovery Best Practices

Disaster Recovery is one of the burning issues in today’s tech world. While data has become the most important component of business, the rate of data loss, data deletion, and data corruption is increasing. You never know when a disaster might occur and attack our database. Therefore, you have to prepare ourselves to deal with any disaster. Precautions about disaster in equally important for SQL Server user. SQL Database is often vulnerable to different natural and man-created disasters. To safeguard the data, it is necessary to have complete knowledge about Microsoft SQL Server disaster recovery best practices. In this post, we will share with you some of Disaster Recovery practices that are considered as the best.

Best Practices Of SQL Server Disaster Recovery

The most effective practices of SQL Disaster Recovery involve looking into the database architecture and create solutions for every possible situation. The solutions can involve backup and other measures of data protection. Let us learn about all the best Disaster Recovery practices.

• Design a Solution that Properly Addresses the Problem

While creating a solution for any problem, you have to make sure that it does not end up creating more problems. Though no design can be called perfect, you must focus on developing the best design that is capable of solving the problem and provide enhanced opportunity. While doing this, always note down why you picked up this particular design over others and how can this meet your goal of solving the problem. At times, when improvement in the solution is expected, design must be compatible with the current SQL Server version. Also, consider the impacts of changes on all the dependent materials, if you are planning to make any changes.

• Find out Possible Weakness of the Solution

No solution design is completely flawless and that is why it is crucial to accept the limitations. This acknowledgment will help you to prepare for the disaster in a better way. There is no shame in having solutions with limited capabilities because of restricted resources and changing circumstances. But the main issue lies in accepting it and find about about automated solutions that can fulfill the limitations of the design. The same policy should be followed in other cases like active-active replication, availability group, etc.

• Consider All other Possible Situations
  Usually, the solution design and its limitations are evaluated based on our knowledge. But what if something else happens that you are not even considering at this point? Your knowledge (or the lack of it) can be your weak point. To counter these issues, you can consider hiring a consultant/ expert to check the design and find out its limitations.

• Create the Solution
  After you find out about all the possible flaws of your design, you need to create the solution as soon as possible. The solution can be anything: backup restoration or Server addition. But, it should be created without wasting any time as you do not know when the disaster might happen. The more you wait, the more risk you put your data into.

• Drill, Drill, and Drill
  The most important thing after setting up the Disaster Recovery Solution is to practice/ drill it. Without drilling, the complete Disaster Recovery project remains incomplete. For drilling, you can re-create the situation in a test environment and then run the solution. Do not forget to have a backup of the solution. Saving the solution script in the test environment without backup can put you in danger if the Server fails.

• Train Junior DBAs
  Drilling for Disaster Recovery is the best time to train the database admins who are new in this profession. Through simulation, they can be prepared for the worst situations that may occur to cover by themselves. Through practices, junior DBAs become comfortable with the “state of panic” and learn how to handle the situation.

• Coordination between All the teams
  In case of large-sized environments, the entire disaster recovery procedure should be done by coordinating with multiple teams like DB Admin team, System team and Developer team. In organizations that do not have this type of team division, coordination must involve everyone who might become affected by the disaster.

• Appreciation and Incentive
  Do not forget to appreciate yourself and everyone else involved in creating the solution and drilling it. Acknowledgment of all the good work done will function as the incentive for future.

• SQL Recovery Tool As The Last Resort For Data Recovery
  These are some of the best practices that can be done to protect SQL Server database during any disaster. However, these cannot assure the foolproof safety of your database items. If you have lost data from your database due to any disaster, you can take the help of SQL Recovery Tool. This application can retrieve all the deleted data from your database regardless of the cause of data loss. This application is suitable for all the latest versions of SQL Server including SQL 2017.

Conclusion
In this post, we have depicted Microsoft SQL Server Disaster Recovery best practices. Reading this, users will become aware of the practices that should be performed to ensure maximum protection against the disasters. If you still lose some data, use SQL Recovery to get back lost data of your database.

Author: Andrew Jackson