Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Steven R Schmidt

Gregory M Smith

Rajeev Bashyam Rajan

Jakub Kulesza

Michael James Zwilling

Hanumantha Rao Kodavalla

Martin J Sleeman

Artem A Oks

Vishal Kathuria

Jeffrey A East

Gregory A Smith

Methods and computer readable media for restoring a database. In a method, a backup of a subset of a database is created, where the subset includes a filegroup and database metadata describing the filegroup. The database is then restored using the database subset. In a computer-readable medium, a first data field contains data representing a database subset having at least one of a plurality of filegroups. A second data field contains data representing database metadata that describes the filegroup. In another method, archived database metadata and an archived filegroup that is one of a plurality of filegroups is accessed, and the filegroup is brought online using the database metadata.

Self-contained partial database backups

Systems and methods are disclosed that facilitate providing page-level database restore functionality upon detection of a corruption event. Updates to a data page in a database can trigger generation of a snapshot of the data page, and an update log can be maintained that stores information related to page updates. Subsequent snapshots can be generated at predetermined intervals and can trigger truncation of a log segment and initiation of a new log segment. Upon detection of page corruption, a most-recent uncorrupt snapshot of the corrupt page can be identified, copied to the location of the corrupt page in the database, and modified according to the log segment associated with the uncorrupt snapshot to make the page current as of the corrupting event, all of which can be performed to restore the database without having to take the database offline.

Page recovery using volume snapshots and logs

A set of servers takes advantage of the existing data redundancy of a mirrored database to restore page corruptions. The page restore may occur with none of the time and/or administration costs of a restore from backup media and without the data loss associated with repair. Online page restore from a database mirror can be initiated and performed by the computer system automatically upon corruption detection. An entire file or database instead of an individual page or set(s) of pages can be restored. The mechanism can be used both to restore corrupt pages on the principal server from a mirror, or corrupt pages on a mirror from the principal server. Online page restore from a database mirror enables page data recovery without the need to find/load/scan through and apply data and log backups, allowing efficient and potentially automatic data recovery.

Online page restore from a database mirror

To avoid possible data corruption resulting from restoring data to a database from a backup set that is not valid for the database, attempted restore operations are intercepted before they are performed. The backup set is examined to determine whether it was created from the same recovery fork on which the database resides or an descendant of that recovery fork. The backup set is only allowed to be applied to the database if the backup set was created from one of these recovery forks. If not, the backup set is not allowed to be applied to the database.

Backup and restoration of data in an electronic database

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Steven R Schmidt