From time to time I get saved only by the grace of good practice. I’ve got this server that has had fairly unreliable backups for a while now. It’s really hit or miss as to whether the whole thing will be backed up on any given day. Yesterday was one of those days when the backups failed. It was very tempting to just let it go and have it pick up the backups the next day, but I bit the bullet and did what it took to run the backups by hand instead. What can I tell you… last night, the NOC guy who runs the ETL process messed up and hosed 2 DBs on that server. At 2:30am I got a call that both of those DBs had to be restored. I was able to restore and get things back on track in just a few mins.

Take a page out of my book and never blow off backups. You never know when you’ll be called on to restore. Anything can happen at any time and you need to be ready. I know sometimes it’s a beating to make sure the troublesome backups complete, but one day it’ll really save the day… and maybe your job.

Remember, a DBA is only as good as his last backup.