In situations with few databases, maintaining the regular backup routine can be achieved easily, either with the help of a few simple scripts, or by configuring a SQL Server agent job that will perform the backup automatically. However, if there are hundreds of databases to manage, backing up each database manually can prove to be quite time-consuming task. In this case, it would be useful to create a solution that would back up all, or multiple selected SQL Server databases automatically, on the regular basis. Furthermore, the solution must not impact the server performance, or cause any downtime.

Each event that causes data loss or disruption of regular daily operations on a SQL Server can be defined as a “disastrous” event. These events include power outages, hardware failure, virus attacks, various types of file corruption, human error, natural disasters, etc. Although there are many methods that are focused on preventing these events, they still occur from time to time, and therefore require proper measures to be addressed. One of the most effective methods for this purpose is the creation of suitable disaster recovery plan.

Introduction

For a SQL Server DBA handling multiple databases on any given time, knowing how to set up regular backup schedules, backups with unique names on a daily basis, making backup mirrors for redundancy, cleaning up old backup files is important. Equally important is automatic confirmation that the backups have been successfully created for the databases with an email notification. There are a couple of different ways to set up email notifications which can be done from Microsoft’s SQL Server Management Studio, or from a third party application for managing MS SQL Server backups like ApexSQL Backup.