Professional Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Administration

18.2. Making Plans

You (or your company) should have a plan for high-availability, backup/recovery, and disaster recovery. There may be a plan for each, or they may all be included in a single document. In a small company, by default this task may fall directly on your shoulders. For larger companies, you may be part of a team that plans for these events. In all cases, a risk/benefit analysis must be done. You must consider the likelihood of the event occurring, the cost of the downtime and other potential costs associated with the event, and the cost of the solution. Your first job will be the research and documentation regarding the risks, costs, and benefits. Management will then decide which events to plan for and make the risk decision. My point here is that the DBA is not the risk decision-maker—that's management's job. However, it is your job to ensure that management understands the issues and that a decision is made. It is then your job to implement whatever plan is necessary and to test the plan on a regular basis.

In this section you will learn the basics of a backup/recovery plan and a disaster recovery plan. Of course, entire books cover each of these subjects, so consider this a basic introduction. High-availability is not covered.

18.2.1. Backup/Recovery Plan

You or your team has primary responsibility for the backup/recovery plan, including the following:

• Analyze business requirements.

• Categorize databases by recovery criteria.

• Document the plan.

• Validate, implement, ...