Comments on: Are your vendors backing up your data? https://effectivedatabase.com/are-your-vendors-backing-up-your-data/ Making data management a revenue generator Tue, 28 Apr 2020 19:42:10 +0000 hourly 1 By: Wes Trochlil https://effectivedatabase.com/are-your-vendors-backing-up-your-data/#comment-1394 Wed, 03 Aug 2016 02:26:17 +0000 http://effectivedatabase.com/?p=7521#comment-1394 In reply to Rene Shonerd.

Excellent advice, Rene! Thanks for sharing.

]]> By: Rene Shonerd https://effectivedatabase.com/are-your-vendors-backing-up-your-data/#comment-1393 Wed, 03 Aug 2016 01:14:56 +0000 http://effectivedatabase.com/?p=7521#comment-1393 When brand new on the job, I asked about the backup schedule on our critical applications. I was told that our managed service vendor was handling it. I investigated further and learned that the managed service vendor was taking server level snapshots per the contract, but no SQL backups were scheduled for any of the 3 applications on the server. I spent the rest of that day setting up backup routines for each SQL instance to run nightly backups and mid-day transaction logs.

I agree with Wes and would recommend you check the backups with your hosting vendor AND your application support vendor because you need both. The SQL backups are needed in the case that the software application fails and the server level snapshots would be best in a distaster recovery scenario.

And after you make sure backups are running on a regular schedule, I would ask your application support vendor about SQL maintenance routines to keep the database running at peak performance. My second week on the job, I learned that no standard SQL maintenance had been performed in over 5 years. Yikes.

Ultimately, it is the association’s responsibility, not the vendor’s, to ensure backups are occurring regularily. A vendor partner should welcome these questions and should be happy to show you the files, or better yet, offer to run a full restore to test the backups will work as intended, should you ever need it.

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