SQL SERVER – Identify Time Between Backups Calculation

As part of my script archives, I stumbled upon a script that I had written a long time back and thought this must get to the blog. This script was inspired from a simple question asked by an DBA when I had visited them for a session. The question was to identify the time taken between backups. I was immediately in asking why they wanted it.

The DBA told me a story that they were taking backups on a tape drive. After such backups being taken, one of the days their latest backup was corrupt. So they resorted to an old backup taken before that. They wanted to know the amount of data loss which might potentially happen because of this roaster.

I personally felt this was a simple requirement and needed to be addressed in some way. I made a rudimentary script to attack this requirement as shown below:

CREATE TABLE #backupset (backup_set_id INT, database_name NVARCHAR(128), backup_finish_date DATETIME, TYPE CHAR(1), next_backup_finish_date DATETIME);
INSERT INTO #backupset (backup_set_id, database_name, backup_finish_date, TYPE)
SELECT backup_set_id, database_name, backup_finish_date, TYPE
FROM msdb.dbo.backupset WITH (NOLOCK)
WHERE backup_finish_date >= DATEADD(dd, -14, GETDATE())
AND database_name NOT IN ('master', 'model', 'msdb', 'ReportServer', 'ReportServerTempDB');
CREATE CLUSTERED INDEX CL_database_name_backup_finish_date ON #backupset (database_name, backup_finish_date);
UPDATE #backupset
SET next_backup_finish_date = (SELECT TOP 1 backup_finish_date FROM #backupset bsNext WHERE bs.database_name = bsNext.database_name AND bs.backup_finish_date < bsNext.backup_finish_date ORDER BY bsNext.backup_finish_date)
FROM #backupset bs;
SELECT bs1.database_name, MAX(DATEDIFF(mi, bs1.backup_finish_date, bs1.next_backup_finish_date)) AS max_minutes_of_data_loss,
'SELECT bs.database_name, bs.type, bs.backup_start_date, bs.backup_finish_date, DATEDIFF(mi, COALESCE((SELECT TOP 1 bsPrior.backup_finish_date FROM msdb.dbo.backupset bsPrior WHERE bs.database_name = bsPrior.database_name AND bs.backup_finish_date > bsPrior.backup_finish_date ORDER BY bsPrior.backup_finish_date DESC), ''1900/1/1''), bs.backup_finish_date) AS minutes_since_last_backup, DATEDIFF(mi, bs.backup_start_date, bs.backup_finish_date) AS backup_duration_minutes, CASE DATEDIFF(ss, bs.backup_start_date, bs.backup_finish_date) WHEN 0 THEN 0 ELSE CAST(( bs.backup_size / ( DATEDIFF(ss, bs.backup_start_date, bs.backup_finish_date) ) / 1048576 ) AS INT) END AS throughput_mb_sec FROM msdb.dbo.backupset bs WHERE database_name = ''' + database_name + ''' AND bs.backup_start_date > DATEADD(dd, -14, GETDATE()) ORDER BY bs.backup_start_date' AS more_info_query
FROM #backupset bs1
GROUP BY bs1.database_name
ORDER BY bs1.database_name
DROP TABLE #backupset;
GO

For each of your databases, it lists the maximum amount of time you want between backups over the last two weeks. You can take this query to for your requirements. I had in the past written few queries with variations of these concepts which are worth a note and here for reference:

Get Database Backup History for a Single Database

Finding Last Backup Time for All Database – Last Full, Differential and Log Backup – Optimized

If you change the query, please let me know via comments so that it will help others using the script too.

Reference: Pinal Dave (https://blog.sqlauthority.com)