Once again I am blogging about material presented to my class.  This time it is Backup/Recovery basics. 

The students have been quizzed on RAID and now have a good understanding of what RAID works well for the data file and what RAID works well for the log.  Again, this is where the SQL Server difference with Access is highlighted.  We are assuming the FULL Recovery Model when discussing this subject. 

I have a scenario where a FULL backup is done at 1am Sunday and Differential backup is done on the other days also at 1am.  I have a second scenario where FULL backups are done daily at 1am.  We then go through the steps to take if a hard drive crashes on various days.  We can't forget about log backups either!  In short, this discussion really helps the students see the separation between a personal database and an enterprise class database.  We will discuss High Availability later in the course.

This is one of my favorite topics because I believe it will stick with them when they go out in the workforce and make decisions about the back-end database.  Sure an access mdb file is easier to care for in the simplest sense, but the SQL Server model puts a premium on the value of data.  It takes more work and skill to cae for a SQL Server database, but the data is protected if setup properly.