White Paper - Backup Using Powershell

8/10/2019 White Paper - Backup Using Powershell

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Backup monitoring - PowerShell

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2011 Accenture. All Rights Reserved. 1 Modified: 12/19/2014 10:44 PM

White Paper on


Submitted By: Nikhil Vyas1/26/2014


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Table of Contents

Control ........................................................................................................................................................ 3

Revision History ......................................................................................................................................................3

Related Documents.................................................................................................................................................3

Introduction ............................................................................................................................................... 4

Procedure ................................................................................................................................................... 5

Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................. 11

References ................................................................................................................................................. 11


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Control

Revision History

Date Version Description Author

1/26/2014 1.0 Initial Draft Nikhil Vyas

Related Documents

No. Title Description Location


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Introduction

One of the most evitable tasks for running a business is making sure we

have the backup of the data in place. The last thing we would like tohappen is our database going down and on that server is our clients

customer list or say banking transactions. Without a backup, we cannot

recover the database and the business goes under. We need to make

sure that our databases are being backed up. We also need to be able

to check and confirm that every database on every server is being

backed up. All this is to be done in a fairly quick time.

Whats PowerShell?

Before getting into the procedure let me reiterate what is powershell for you.

Windows PowerShell isMicrosoft's task automation and configuration

management framework, consisting of acommand-lineshell and

associatedscripting language built on.NET Framework.PowerShell provides fullaccess toCOM andWMI,enabling administrators to perform administrative tasks

on both local and remote Windows systems as well asWS-

Management andCIM enabling management of remote Linux systems and

network devices.

You can read more about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_PowerShell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsofthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command-line_interfacehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_(computing)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scripting_languagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Frameworkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Modelhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Management_Instrumentationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WS-Managementhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WS-Managementhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Information_Model_(computing)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_PowerShellhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_PowerShellhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_PowerShellhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Information_Model_(computing)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WS-Managementhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WS-Managementhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Management_Instrumentationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Modelhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Frameworkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scripting_languagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_(computing)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command-line_interfacehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft


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Procedure

There are many ways through which one can back up the database but in this

case I would like to bring to notice the effectiveness of powershell in doing so.

Let us understand how PowerShell and also the SQL snap-ins help us to make the

task much easier.We can only do this on a machine where SQL snap-ins is installed. If we have the

SQL 2008 or later installed, we should be good to go.

Open the SQL snap-ins using the below command on powershell. It doesn not

matter which version of Powershell we are using.The below command areindependent of the version on Powershell

Add-pssnapin SqlServerProviderSnapin100

In this case I will query a localized installation of SQL Server. We can change

out localhost\DEFAULT for the SQL server we are using. Use DEFAULT if it

is not a named instance (example - Server SQLSERVER and instance name

as NORTHWIND would be would be SQLSERVER\NORTHWIND)

Now, we can display the list of database on the SQL Instance and get the

information about their last backup date using the below command

dir SQLSERVER:\SQL\SQLSERVER\NORTHWIND\Databases | Select Name,LastBackupDate | Out-GridView

(Server is SQL SERVER and DB Instance is NORTHWIND)

o

The result will fetch you something like this


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Name LastBackupDate

AdventureWorks2008R2 12/27/2013 11:53

Report Server 12/26/2013 1:53

SQLInfo 11/26/2013 10:23BankDB 11/5/2013 1:53

Please not that the MASTER, MODEL, MSDB databases will not be displayed

with the above commands since they are the system database. System

Databases are hidden and hence we would need to use the Force

parameter as

o

dir -force SQLSERVER:\SQL\SQLSERVER\NORTHWIND\Databases |

Select Name, LastBackupDate | Out-GridView

Name LastBackupDate

AdventureWorks2008R2 12/27/2013 11:53

Report Server 12/26/2013 1:53

SQLInfo 11/26/2013 10:23

BankDB 11/5/2013 1:53

master 12/7/2013 0:00

model 12/8/2013 0:00

msdb 12/8/2013 1:05

As we see that we are getting the information about last backup taken but

thing to note is that the information provided was the last full backup and

no information provided for differential backup. Also, if we run the above

commands and then backup and again run the command, we would not see

the change in results. This is because the data is cached every time we are

running the command. The solution is to run the refresh command.


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ELSE {"DIFF"}};width=25},

@{Label="Days Since Last Backup";Expression={IF

($_.LastBackupDate -eq "01/01/0001 00:00:00") {"Never Backed

Up!"}

ELSEIF ($_.LastDifferentialBackupDate -gt $_.LastBackupDate) {((Get-

Date) - $_.LastDifferentialBackupDate).Days}ELSE {((Get-Date) - $_.LastBackupDate).Days}};width=25}

if ($Northwind)

{

dir -force $location | where-object {$_.Name -eq $Northwind;

$_.Refresh()} |

format-table $DisplayResults

}

else

{

dir -force $location | where-object {$_.Name -ne "tempdb";

$_.Refresh()} |format-table $DisplayResults

}

}

Now to return good, relevant information, we simply call this function along with

the SQL instance name as shown here. Get-DatabaseInfo Northwind


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Now when we have the information related to the entire database and

their backup information, we would need the same information to you in

the mail so that we do not have to run the command every time we need

the information. This can be achieved easily by fetching the data into a table in anyone of

your database. Say, we have the table called DBBackup, the following

command will fetch us the results of all the backup information in table and

from there we can send the information in a mail.

o

SELECT*FROMdbo.DBBackup

The below command will actually help us send the email to desired

recipient. We will use the Invoke-sqlcmd .The Invoke-Sqlcmdcmdlet lets you

run your sqlcmdscript files in a Windows PowerShell environment.


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$FailedBackups = invoke-sqlcmd@params

-Query"Select ServerName,DatabaseName

, case LastAbsoluteBackupDate

when '1900-01-01 00:00:00' then 'Never Backed Up'else

convert(varchar(20), LastAbsoluteBackupDate, 120)

end as

LastBackup

,case LastAbsoluteBackupDate

when '1900-01-01 00:00:00' then 'Never Backed Up'

else

convert(varchar,IncrementalBackup)

end as IncrementalBackupfrom dbo. DBBackup where IncrementalBackup > 0" | convertTo-Html-

Head$style -PropertyServerName, DatabaseName, LastBackup,

IncrementalBackup | out-string;

We can then provide the SMTP information

Send-MailMessage-To"[email protected]"

-Subject"Alarm Database not backedup"

From"[email protected]"

-SmtpServer"mysmtpserver"

-Body$FailedBackups BodyAsHtml

We can get the most out of it by scheduling it to the desired timings usingthe SQL Server Agent which will help us avoid any issues prior to any

business impact.


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Conclusion

Although getting information on backup can be accomplished by

querying the database creating a function and calling it at the required

time( We can even deliver the same to mailbox) however the biggest

difficulty in getting that dont through SQL is that It will not provide

information of the database which are not backed up. Also, since

multiple databases are involved here due to the indexing and

maintenance strategiesthe data retrieval will be far slower than doing

it through the Windows Powershell.

References

1.Wikipedia

2.Microsoft - MSDN

White Paper - Backup Using Powershell

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