Database Snapshots – Part 3 – Data Recovery

In this final part of our series on SQL Server database snapshots, I’m going to talk about what, I think, is the most forgotten feature/use of snapshots:  data recovery.  If you (or ‘a friend’) makes a mistake and deletes data you shouldn’t have, or perhaps accidentally drops a table, if you have a snapshot, you [...]

March 17, 2011  Tags: , ,   Posted in: Features, General  2 Comments

Database Snapshots – Part 2 – Offload reporting

So now that we know a little bit about database snapshots in SQL Server, what else are they good for?  One thing you can do is use snapshots in conjunction with database mirroring to offload reporting onto another server. Suppose you’re using mirroring as part of a high-availability solution.  Normally that mirrored database/server would sit [...]

March 14, 2011  Tags: ,   Posted in: Features, General  One Comment

Database Snapshots – Part 1 – An Introduction

Let’s say you support the database for a financial system, and periodically, whether it be monthly, quarterly, or yearly, they close out the period and run a bunch of reports before they let users back on the system to start making new transactions.  Depending on your system, the size of your database, and how those [...]

March 7, 2011  Tags: ,   Posted in: Features, General  2 Comments