SQLAuthority News – Book Review – Backup & Recovery (Paperback)

Backup & Recovery [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)
by W. Curtis Preston (Author)

Link to Amazon

Short Summary:
This book’s does not only teaches you have to create safe backup but it takes you to the next level where a large organization can save tons of dollars a year by making their backup and restore faster and more reliable process.

Detail Summary:
Backup and Recovery is the most interesting subject to me. I have always enjoyed reading and writing about this subject. I personally believe that without proper backup and ability to restore the backup to recover the system to original state, any organization is at great risk. Biggest change in the recent industry has been the proliferation of Windows, Exchange and SQL Server.

This book is aimed at the people who feel that the commercial software precuts aren’t meeting all their needs. Almost everything which is discussed in this book is either included with operating system or application. This book vastly covers the tools which are open-source projects. This book covers how to back up and recover everything from a basic Linux, Windows, or Max OS workstation to a complicated DB2, Oracle, Sybase or SQL Server (my favorite) databases as well many other things.

This book suggests tools which are less than $100 or in most of the cases almost free. This book is for every developer or system administrator. This book tells users how exactly to choose which backup tool is best. This book stays away from ever changing product names. It focuses on concepts only – what a novel approach! I appreciate author for the same.

This book focuses on two people mainly – Database Administrators (DBA) and System Administrator (SA). Concepts for both the roles are explained in detail in this book. In author’s own word “I explained the backup utilities in plain language so that any DBA can understand them, and I explain database architecture in such a way that an SA, even one who has never before seen a database, can understand it.”

A book on Backup and Recovery are incomplete without discussing Bare-Metal Recovery. When operating system disk is lost and it is needed to recovered, it is called Bare-Metal Recovery. Out of hundreds of way to recover, this book focuses on best ways for Bare-Metal Recovery.

Working as SQL Server Principal Database Administrator, I have been involved with Database Backup since day one. In several years of my career, I have seen many large organizations ignoring backup of master database. I was very glad when I see in just three lines author has conveyed clear message about master database. These three lines explain the understanding of author for SQL Server.

“It is extremely important to backup the master database on regular basis. This database holds all the configuration information for the running system as well as all the configuration information for all databases and other information such as logon accounts. Without this database, the rest of the system is useless!”

Rating: 4 and 1/2 stars

In Summary, Backup and Recovery is not everything. This book takes you to highest level of the backup and recovery at conceptually strong working examples.

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