The four backup strategies discussed below offer differing levels of speed and flexibility. They all share one common aspect, media protection. Tapes can and do fail. Disks can and do fail. By utilizing both tape and disk, you significantly minimize losing a backup due to a media failure. This protection also comes in terms of offsite storage. All of your tape backups should be rotated off site to a secure location geographically separated from yoru servers. In the event of the entire building blowing up, you still have valid backups and can restore the systems to the last backup allowing the business to continue functioning.

The backup strategies I will discuss will all utilize the same general schedule. Full database backups are taken each evening of all databases on a server. Differential backups are taken every six hours. Transaction log backups are taken every hour between the differential backup. So as not to have backups overlap, they are scheduled on a staggered basis.

1. 12AM – Full backup
2. Every hour at 15 after – Transaction log backup
3. Every 6 hours at 30 after – Differential backup

The complete schedule looks like the following in military time:

1. 0000 – Full backup
2. 0115 – Transaction log
3. 0215 – Transaction log
4. 0315 – Transaction log
5. 0415 – Transaction log
6. 0515 – Transaction log
7. 0615 – Transaction log
8. 0630 – Differential backup
9. 0715 – Transaction log
10. 0815 – Transaction log
11. 0915 – Transaction log
12. 1015 – Transaction log
13. 1115 – Transaction log
14. 1215 – Transaction log
15. 1230 – Differential backup
16. 1315 – Transaction log
17. 1415 – Transaction log
18. 1515 – Transaction log
19. 1615 – Transaction log
20. 1715 – Transaction log
21. 1815 – Transaction log
22. 1830 – Differential backup
23. 1915 – Transaction log
24. 2015 – Transaction log
25. 2115 – Transaction log
26. 2215 – Transaction log
27. 2315 – Transaction log

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