Restoring a SQL Database

When we create a backup maintenance plan with one Full backup and transaction log backups for every 15 minutes, it is sometimes necessary to restore the FULL backup and all the corresponding transactional backups sequentially. This may happen if the production box goes down or if you want to have the same database restored to another Server, etc. It is tiresome to locate all the transaction log backups and restore them one by one.

In this article, I would like to guide SQL Server DBAs to use a procedure, which can:

This procedure uses xp_cmdshell and the MS-DOS 'DIR' command to find the backup and transactions log sequence based on the file date.

Let us simulate the whole backup and restore process.

Step 1

Create a database, "Inventory," in FULL recovery mode. (You can use the below script):

Use master
Go
CREATE DATABASE [inventory]  
  ON (NAME = N'inventory', 
  FILENAME = N'D:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL\data\inventory.mdf' , 
  SIZE = 1, FILEGROWTH = 10%) 
LOG ON (NAME = N'inventory_log', 
  FILENAME = N'D:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL\data\Inventory_log.LDF' , 
  FILEGROWTH = 10%)
Go
Alter DATABASE [inventory]  set recovery FULL
GO

Step 2

Create a maintenance plan with one full backup, (as shown in figure Fig 1.0), and transaction log backup for every 5 minutes, (as shown in figure Fig 2.0).

When this maintenance plan runs, it creates .BAK and .TRN files as shown in the figure Fig 3.0.