Human Error: People to Blame for 9 in 10 SQL Restore Requests

A research from Kroll Ontrack Ltd. highlights that an overwhelming majority (87% ) of SQL restore events have their roots in human error.

Kroll Ontrack surveyed 304 SQL database administrators and developers between 2nd February and 9th March 2015.
 
The most common human error is accidental deletion accounting for one in three (35% ) restore requests. This is followed by development errors (28% ), erroneous overwrites (24% ) and system crashes (13% ) adding hours of recovery time for SQL database administrators (DBAs).
 
Further, the research demonstrates that respondents field nearly twice as many requests to restore data to development and test environments compared to production environments. This is a logical outcome considering that developers are continually trying out new things in development environments, making them highly iterative and therefore less stable. In fact, on a monthly basis, 50% of respondents handle between one and five development and test restore requests, nearly 20%  handle between six and ten requests, and 15% tackle more than ten requests each month. With previous Kroll Ontrack survey results reporting database table restorations taking upwards of an hour to complete, leveraging efficient technologies to reduce restore time is key to saving time and money.
 
“It’s no secret that data housed within SQL databases is critically important to the business success of an organisation,” says Paul Le Messurier, programme and operations manager, Kroll Ontrack. “As such, any disruption to the database is inherently costly, putting pressure on DBAs to execute an efficient recovery solution yesterday. Ontrack PowerControls for SQL gives DBAs the ability to granularly restore SQL tables ins, not hours, without having to restore the entire database or use SQL to read the backups.“
 
Addressing Compressed Backups
In its most recent release, Ontrack PowerControls for SQL 8.1 adds functionality to support compressed SQL Server backups in addition to native backups and storage tier snapshots, giving IT administrators the ability to open and restore tables from compressed backups.
 
“Compressed backups became widely available with SQL Server 2008 R2 and are in use by the majority of organisations,” says Sascha Lorenz, Microsoft MVP. “In addition to the apparent benefit of storage space reduction, compressed backups have gained in popularity because backups can be done faster and restore time is quicker from the backup.”
 
Ontrack PowerControls additionally empowers DBAs
to better address regular SQL table restoration through:

• Drag and drop functionality: Easily restore single tables from native SQL backups or storage tier snapshots to the desired environment, eliminating the need to restore the entire database
• Pre-restore validation: Preview table content to verify the table data is correct prior to performing the restore
• Streamlined process: Eliminate the need for T-SQL or PowerShell scripting when copying a table from a backup or snapshot
   

Ontrack PowerControls supports SQL Server 2005, 2008, 2008 R2, 2012 and 2014 and does not require a unique or proprietary backup format to perform the restore.

To download free trial of Ontrack PowerControls for SQL (registration needed)