Backup and Recovery Best Practices › Backup Concepts › Backup Considerations › Backup Strategy Recommendations

Backup Strategy Recommendations

To establish a good backup strategy, follow these recommendations:

• If your database activity is low to medium, we recommend the following pattern:
  • Full backups: once per week
  • Differential backups: once per day
  • Transaction Log backups: every two to four hours
• If your database activity is high and your database is of small to medium size, we recommend the following pattern:
  • Full backups: twice per week
  • Differential backups: twice per day
  • Transaction Log backups: every 60 minutes
• If your database activity is high for a large size database using the Full or Bulk-Logged Recovery model, we recommend the following pattern:
  • Full backup: once per week
  • Differential backup: once per day
  • Transaction Log backup: every 20 minutes
• If your database activity is high for a large size database using the Simple Recovery model, we recommend the following pattern:
  • Full backup: once per week
  • Differential backup: twice per day