Professional Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Administration

18.3. Overview of Backup and Restore

Before you can effectively formulate a backup and restore plan, you need to know how backup and recovery works on a mechanical level. SQL Server 2008 has several different backup and recovery processes that you can use, depending on the needs of your organization. This section examines how backup and recovery work and helps you choose the best plan for your needs.

18.3.1. How Backup Works

Database backup is a procedure that safeguards your organization's investment to reduce the amount of data loss. A database backup is the process of making a point-in-time copy of the data and transaction log into an image on either disks or tapes. SQL Server 2008 implements versatile backup processes that can be used separately or together to produce the optimal backup strategy required by an organization. Moreover, SQL Server 2008 can perform the database backup while it is online and available to users. Additionally, it supports up to 64 concurrent backup devices. The following types of backup are available:

• Full backup: This is a copy of all data in the database, including the transaction log. Using this backup type, you can restore the database to the point in time when the backup was taken. It is the most basic of the backups and is often required prior to any of the other backup types. When restoring from a full database backup, all of the database files are restored without any other dependencies, the database is available, and it is transactionally ...