SQL Server Analysis Services 2012 Cube Development Cookbook

Backup and restore

Assuring data availability is the primary responsibility of each database administrator, so collecting and validating SSAS database backups is essential for your job security. You can only collect full database backups—Analysis Services does not support backups at individual cube, measure group, or dimension level, nor does it support incremental or differential backups. Hence, when building SSAS databases, it is imperative to consider which data sets need to be backed up together. For example, if 80 percent of user queries examine current data and only 20 percent check historical data, you could implement two databases—one for historical and the other for recent data. If historical data changes rarely, you may only need to ...