Network Administration: You are backing up those SQL boxes, aren’t you?

I was doing an architecture assessment for a new customer, and noticed that their last netadmin/IT provider had neglected to run backups of their SQL server databases. Had in fact, never run any type of database backup.

Surprising, you might think? Amazed that they have never needed to restore anything? You’d think I would be… but no, not really. At this point, I’ve met with enough business owners and decision makers to realize that this type of thing is really par for the course among many small to mid-sized organizations.

Why this is, and what can be done about it, are topics for another day. But I just thought it might be worth mentioning here.

If this hits home for you, or if you don’t know if your IT group is doing backups of your SQL server databases, now might be a good time to bring it up. While you’re at it, find out what type of backups are being done, what the loss exposure is, if the restore procedure is documented, and determine if/when the last test recovery was performed.