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Recovering from a Disaster

To recover from a disaster, after you acquire and install any necessary replacement hardware, perform the following steps:

  1. Install a Microsoft Windows platform, and apply the appropriate service pack. Verify that appropriate domain functionality exists.

  2. Install Microsoft SQL Server, and apply the appropriate service pack. Restore the master database backup and the msdb database backup. After restoring the master database, restart the server.

Note

If you are unable to restore master, you need to rebuild it. For more information, see Rebuilding System Databases.

  1. Reconfigure the server for the appropriate network libraries and security mode.

  2. Using SQL Server Configuration Manager, confirm that the SQL Server instance is running properly and, if not, start it. For more information, see How to: Start an Instance of SQL Server (SQL Server Configuration Manager).

  3. Check the Windows application log. If the Windows computer name changed, use sp_dropserver and sp_addserver to correlate it with the SQL Server computer name. For more information, see sp_dropserver (Transact-SQL) and sp_addlinkedserver (Transact-SQL).

  4. Restore and recover each database according to its recovery plan.

  5. Verify the availability of the system. Run your base-functionality script to ensure correct operation.

  6. Allow users to resume normal usage.