Backing Up Projects Overview (Microsoft SQL Server)

You should back up your databases regularly. If you have a heavily-used production database, you should back it up nightly and you should always use a log file.

You should also back up data at important milestones. For example, if you finish a yearly chargeback project, you should back up the data and label it as being the basis for that chargeback. The same goes for whenever you finish a data entry project.

There are several methods for backing up databases. The following are detailed below.

Microsoft SQL Server has a very broad and flexible set of features for creating and restoring backups. Two other strategies that you may wish to consider are:

  • Differential back-up -- In this back-up strategy, you create only a copy of the changes made since the previous backup. To save storage space, some sites prefer to perform a full backup weekly and a differential backup nightly. Refer to the "Creating and Restoring Differential Database Backups" topic in the SQL Server Online Books documentation for more information
  • Transaction log back-up -- I n this back-up strategy, you keep a set of transaction log files describing all of the changes to the database since the last backup. Some sites prefer this method since, if there is a failure of the server, the system can record changes made to the database up to the moment of that failure. Refer to the "Creating and Applying Transaction Log Backups" topic in the SQL Server Online Books documentation for more information.

The Microsoft SQL Server documentation provides many more options. It is strongly recommended that your Microsoft SQL Server database administrator establish a regular back-up strategy appropriate for your organization.