What information do I need to send to get help with a SQL recovery?

Applies to:
ApexSQL Log, ApexSQL Recover

Summary:
This article helps users to gather information to send to the ApexSQL Support team to receive adequate and timely help with a SQL recovery process

Description:

The following information can facilitate a successful support/recovery outcome:

  • Brief description on what you are trying to recover from. e.g. rogue deletes, recover truncated or dropped tables, data changes (Inadvertent actions like delete, update, drop object, truncate table)

  • Information on the available recovery sources:

    • Do you have a full database backup available?

    • Has the online transaction log file been truncated after/before the disaster has occurred?

    • What is the size of transaction log file, transaction log backups, database backups, and database itself?

    • Are transaction log backups available and do you have a full chain of transaction log backups

  • Information on any post-disaster steps you’ve already performed. e.g. created database or transaction log backups, restored database backup, created .ldf and .mdf copies, took database offline…

  • Are you able to install the ApexSQL tool on the production server and perform the recovery locally, or install only server-side components on the server and access the SQL Server remotely?

  • What is the recovery model of the database for recovery (full/simple)? – this can be checked by looking into the “Options” tab in the database properties

  • Windows version and type – this can be checked in the Windows System pane, accessed by pressing Windows+Pause/Break key (i.e. Windows 10 Enterprise x64)

  • SQL Server version and type – for full version, check Server Properties in SQL Server Management Studio or execute the following query on your SQL Server instance (i.e. SQL Server 12.0.2569.0 x64 or SQL Server 2014×64 Developer Edition)

    SELECT @@VERSION AS 'SQL Server Version'
    

If you’ve already tried to perform the recovery with any ApexSQL tool, the following information may also be helpful and provided when possible:

  • What are the exact steps you’ve executed? (e.g. connected to the database with ApexSQL Recover and created a recovery script to recover from drop operation…)
  • What was the expected result vs the end result of the recovery process? (e.g. User expected to recover 20k rows, and only 2k was recovered)
  • Please include application log files in the email

Useful links: