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 Snapshots as backup strategy

Author  Topic 

anaylor01
Starting Member

28 Posts

Posted - 2012-03-26 : 21:43:44
Has anyone done this?

tkizer
Almighty SQL Goddess

38200 Posts

Posted - 2012-03-26 : 22:18:44
How is that a backup strategy? What is wrong with normal backups?

Tara Kizer
Microsoft MVP for Windows Server System - SQL Server
http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/tarad/

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anaylor01
Starting Member

28 Posts

Posted - 2012-03-27 : 00:56:36
Lack of space
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russell
Pyro-ma-ni-yak

5072 Posts

Posted - 2012-03-27 : 12:34:17
This is a terrible idea.

Snapshots will let you pull back data that was accidentally deleted, but can't protect you from a damaged database.
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tkizer
Almighty SQL Goddess

38200 Posts

Posted - 2012-03-27 : 12:48:30
quote:
Originally posted by anaylor01

Lack of space



Disks are cheap. Losing data is not.

Tara Kizer
Microsoft MVP for Windows Server System - SQL Server
http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/tarad/

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GilaMonster
Master Smack Fu Yak Hacker

4507 Posts

Posted - 2012-03-27 : 12:58:28
If you don't mind your backup 'strategy' resulting in complete data loss if a database is ever deleted or marked suspect or otherwise unavailable, sure go ahead.

Snapshots are NOT backups. They are not independent copies of the database and for them to be queryable, the source database has to be available. If the source DB can't be opened (say a damaged or missing file), then all the snapshots will be unavailable as well.

The point of a backup is to be able to restore the DB no matter what happens to the DB, on the same or another server. A snapshot does not do either of those.

--
Gail Shaw
SQL Server MVP
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jeffw8713
Aged Yak Warrior

819 Posts

Posted - 2012-03-27 : 13:32:17
If you are talking about database snapshots - then as everyone else has stated...no.

If you are talking about SAN snapshots - and have a process in place to backup those SAN snapshots, and the SAN utility integrates with SQL
Server to update the backup information - then possibly.
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