Meme Monday: I Got 9 SQL Backup Problems but a Disk Ain’t One…

First of all I had no idea Hugo did a version of “99 Problems.” I may be biased because I have two turntables and a microphone (If you volunteer to help or speak at  SQLSaturday #80 I can give you a demo) but its true Jay-Z’s version is much better than Hugo’s version.

I got two turntables and a microphone

Now that we have who’s version of “99 Problems…” is better resolved lets dive into this months Meme Monday. If you are not familiar with Meme Monday check out Tom LaRock’s (blog | @SQLRockStar) blog post for more details.

Here are nine problems directly related to backups and monitoring backups that I have seen in my IT career that spans an ISV shop, consulting and the corporate world. I hope you don’t find these in your shop. Here they are in no particular order.

1. No Automated process to backup your databases
2. No retention policy or standards
3. No Automated process to verify that backups succeeded
4. Database Mail is not enabled (You cannot get any job failure emails with out DB mail)
5. Notification for backup jobs don’t include an operator to alert SQL team on failure
6. DBA doesn’t practice recovering databases from backups
7. No automated  jobs to do transactional log backups on databases in “Full”  or “Bulk-Logged” Recovery mode
8. Backups do not exist outside the production server
9. Backup drive ran out of space (Oh snap, I broke rule #1 I cannot talk about disks)