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Showing posts from December, 2013

Restore master database with Dell NetVault Litespeed for SQL Server

The DBA teams asked if I could create a job in our maintenance routines to do a native backup of the master database instead of a Litespeed backup. Their reason was they weren't able to restore master using Litespeed because the database server had to be in single-user mode to do such a restore and Litespeed required two connections to the server to do the task. I mentioned that there are instructions in the Litespeed help files for a master database restore. The team told me that it didn't work for them. So, I took the task to validate the instructions found here https://support.quest.com/search/SolutionDetail.aspx?id=SOL13484 I took a backup of the master database at 9:44 AM. Next, I created a login on the server after the backup called ThisLoginWillNotBeHereAfterMasterDatabaseRestore to prove the master database restore did in fact happen. This login will no longer exist after the upcoming master database restore because it was not

There is more than one way to find database backup files

I was told d uring the initial implementation of Ola Hallengren's Maintenance Solution at my workplace that it was too hard to find database backup files in the default folder structure his solution creates.    The concern was that it took too long to find the oldest file or the biggest file when trying to resolve a space issue on a database server. Ola's solution creates a folder tree with these elements. Drive:\root\ServerName\DatabaseName\TypeOfBackup You specify the backup drive and root folder using the Directory parameter of the DatabaseBackup stored procedure. When I originally solved this problem, Windows XP was in use.  I wish I had spent more time figuring this out because I had to modify Ola's database backup procedure to dump all the backups into one folder in order for the DBA teams to sign off on the initial deployment. It only takes a couple of minutes to search using Windows Explorer in Windows XP but finding files in a folder tree has gotten much easi