Microsoft SQL Server Disaster Recovery Best Practices

SQL Server is a widely used relational database system for storing and retrieving data. Disaster recovery is the most popular method used for SQL Server database safeguards. Therefore, the administrator must take reasonable precautions to protect the database from loss in such cases. This blog introduces the Microsoft SQL Server disaster recovery best practices that users can use to recover data from a natural or man-made disaster.

Basic Points of SQL Disaster Recovery

The disaster recovery plan must be complete and include all dependencies. If the current SQL Server needs to be restored, make sure that all dependencies on SQL Server are in place. File system dependencies, Windows accounts, applications, and many other aspects of the server must be available because all disaster recovery plans have failed because the hardware platform dependency does not exist.

Your plan must be as simple and malicious as possible. Only a few SQL Server disaster recovery technologies limit the possible actions on the source server. For example, whether you can change the recovery model when using database mirroring. Here are a few more steps to ensure that the SQL Server disaster recovery site is often up to date: Replication and log shipping cannot replicate logins. In addition, numerous processes are required to ensure that all logins are in one place and up to date in the event of disaster recovery.

If you have corrupted SQL database files, then you need to recover them using SQL Recovery Tool. This will help you to repair corrupted SQL database along with all objects. With this, you can repair and restore SQL database to a new or existing database.

Microsoft SQL Server Disaster Recovery Best Practices

The latest versions of SQL Server offer some options for setting up a disaster recovery mechanism that can be useful for SQL administrators in difficult situations. We’ll discuss them in the following section.

1. Backup and Restore
2. Using AlwaysOn and Basic Database Availability Groups
3. Failover Clustering
4. Log Shipping
5. Database Replication

Option 1: Regular Backup of SQL Server Database

This is the best and most preferred SQL disaster recovery plan. Users can take database backup regularly and easily restore it when it is needed. Let’s know more about database backup:

• Taking Database backup using SQL Server Management Studio, T-SQL commands or PowerShell.
• Perform different types of database backup: Full Database, Differential Database, Partial Database, Transaction Log Files.
• Restore SQL database from a backup (.bak file) when needed.

Option 2: Using AlwaysOn and Basic Database Availability Groups

AlwaysOn Availability Groups (AG) are the most important technologies for SQL Server High Availability (HA) and Microsoft SQL Server Disaster Recovery best practices. AlwaysOn AGs are only included in the SQL Server Enterprise version and offer protection for various databases with programmed failover. How it works, we have listed in the below steps:

• Always-On Availability Groups works with Pacemaker on Linux / Windows Server / Windows Failover Cluster.
• It provides synchronization with secondary databases and asynchronized secondary databases for disaster recovery.
• Availability groups that are always available take primary database backups and restore them safely to another system.
• Basic Availability Groups work just like Always-On Availability to protect the SQL database.

Option 3: Failover Clustering

AlwaysOn FCI provides server-level security against unexpected damage or outages. Let’s know more about it:

• Works on Windows Server with Windows Server Failover Cluster and with Pacemaker on Linux.
• AlwaysOn FCI can be used for SQL disaster recovery using geo-clustering with different cluster nodes that are placed at different physical locations.
• AlwaysOn FCI is maintained in the standard and enterprise versions of SQL Server 2017.
• If a cluster node fails, the services hosted on that node can be automatically or manually transferred to another node called failover.

Option 4: SQL Log Shipping

Log shipping is available in all SQL versions from 2000 onwards, including SQL 2017 Standard, Enterprise editions and for earlier SQL versions.

• In log shipping, the administrator takes backup of the transaction logs on the primary database.
• Move this backup to one or more secondary databases.
• Restore transaction log backup on the secondary SQL Server database.

Option 5: Database Replication

This procedure copies the SQL Server database data and then distributes it to another database. This is another Microsoft SQL Server Disaster Recovery best practices. Let’s discuss its important points:

• Replication technology consists of publishers, which are databases that provide data, and subscribers, which are databases that receive databases from publishers.
• Any changes in publishers are automatically updated to subscribers when they are synchronized
• It offers load balancing, which allows data to be shared and loads to be queried with a number of servers.

These are the 5 SQL Server database recovery plans or options that SQL administrator can follow to protect the SQL database from future disasters. But if your SQL database files are corrupted, then you need to use SQL Recovery Software. With this, you can repair corrupted SQL database MDF file and save data directly to the live SQL Server Database.

Final Words

In this blog, we discussed the best SQL disaster recovery plan or options to protected data from future disasters. We have explained 5 Microsoft SQL Server Disaster Recovery best practices and how it works. In case you have a damaged SQL database, it is advisable to go with the SQL Database Recovery tool.