Suppose your server is running fine. Your application is booming all over the internet. Then, due to short-circuiting your servers went on fire. Now, all the data is gone and there’s nothing to show. Scary? It should be. This is the reason we always want to back up our data. So that in case of any disaster like hardware or software failure there will not be any data loss.
There are several types of backup options.
* Full backup : This backup includes all database objects, system tables, and data. Transactions that occur during the backup are also recorded.
* Transaction log backup : This backup records the transactions since the previous backup. Previous backup can be transaction log backup or full backup (whichever happened last). It then truncates the transaction log. Transaction log backup represents the state of the transaction log at the time the backup is initiated rather than at the time the backup completes. Transaction log backup functions incrementally rather than differentially. When restoring transaction log backup, you must restore in the sequence of transaction log backups.
* Differential backup : This backup backs the data that has been altered since the last full backup. Differential backup requires less time than a full database backup. Differential backups record transactions that occur during the differential backup process.
* Copy Only Backup : A copy-only backup is a SQL Server backup that is independent of the sequence of conventional SQL Server backups. Usually, taking a backup changes the database and affects how later backups are restored.
The types of copy-only backups are as follows :
* Copy-only full backups (all recovery models)
A copy-only backup cannot serve as a differential base or differential backup and does not affect the differential base.
Restoring a copy-only full backup is the same as restoring any other full backup.
* Copy-only log backups (full recovery model and bulk-logged recovery model only)
* File and Filegroup backup : This topic describes how to back up files and filegroups in SQL Server by using SQL Server Management Studio, Transact-SQL, or PowerShell. When the database size and performance requirements make a full database backup impractical, you can create a file backup instead. A file backup contains all the data in one or more files (or filegroups).
