To take a Full backup of the AdventureWorks database, just replace the Database Name and File Path in the above BACKUP DATABASE command and execute it: BACKUP DATABASE The full syntax is present in the MSDN article.īACKUP DATABASE Syntax (minimal) BACKUP DATABASE The Backup database syntax has a lot of options available, but we’ll only focus on the fundamental commands required to take the Full Backup of any database.

Even though SQL Server can accept the Full Database Backup in different file extensions, it is recommended to save that backup as a *.bak file for easier classification and maintenance. Hence, regular Full Backups on the system as well as User databases are crucial.Īpart from Full Backup, SQL Server supports several other Backup options like Differential Backup, Transactional Log backup, File backup, etc., but we aren’t going to focus on them since it is outside the scope of this article.Ī Full Database Backup should be scheduled to execute periodically or after any specific configuration changes. The term Backup refers to copying the data inside a database as a backup file that can be used to restore or recover the data further.Ī Full Backup of a database will contain the data copies across Data Files and Log files to either restore as a database or do the point-in-time restore in case of any disasters or catastrophic failures.

Since Backup and Restore of System database is slightly different compared to User databases, we will go through how to Backup System databases and Restore system database from Backups in detail in this article. We have also understood the Tempdb and MSDB databases in more detail. In the previous articles of the SQL Server System Databases series, we have learnt the purpose of all SQL Server System databases that comes as part of SQL Server installation and understood the best practices to be implemented for them.

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