Maintaining the Database

This topic outlines several recommendations regarding database administration, maintenance, and backup. A comprehensive approach to database maintenance is imperative for mission-critical business applications in production environments. The suggestions offered in this topic are general guidelines that are intended to provide a brief overview of SQL Server administration tasks.

Aptify does not recommend the use of integrated SQL Back Up agents that are provided with certain tape backup packages. The SQL Back Up agents do not generally support image or text data types. Aptify recommends using the built-in Microsoft SQL Server utilities to create disk backups that are later backed up to tape.

When creating backup jobs, the partition occupied by the operating system, and any other partitions containing a page file, should not be used as a backup location. This is related to the unknown size of the database backup. Not following this general rule can result in extreme system slow-down or operating system crashes.

Following the suggestions in this topc should be viewed as a good first step, but the Aptify system administrator must also have a thorough understanding of SQL Server administrative utilities. There are a number of technical publications that provide many more details on SQL Server maintenance, including SQL Server Books Online. The reader is encouraged to consult these publications while planning overall database maintenance and backup strategy for a production system. This chapter is not intended to serve as a replacement for a good general knowledge of SQL Server and associated Microsoft products and technologies.

This topic contains the following sub-topics:

• Recommendations for Backup and Restoration
• Backup Strategy for the APTIFY Database
• Creating a SQL Database Maintenance Plan