Backu and restore of multiple filegroups

[TheBugSlayer]

Hello dear members,

I have a database with one of the tables being larger than the other tables by orders of magnitude. There is a group of 5 tables that form a subsystem within the data and we would like to store, backup and restore them separately, in hopes of reducing I/O times and speeding up recovery.

I am not sure however whether a full back up needs to be restored prior to restoring the file group these tables will eventually be moved to, every time. Is that so? If that's the case then it looks as though no time will be saved in the recovery process.

Thanks for your input.

MCP SQL Server 2000, MCTS SQL Server 2005, MCTS SQL Server 2008 (DBD, DBA), Training HOTT cert SQL Server 2012 Business Intelligence (SSIS, SSAS).

 

[yelworcm]

You can restore individual filegroups, but you will need to have ALL of the transaction logs available, in order to get the various filegroups all to the same LSN (Log Sequence Number). The database will not (and really should not) open if the files are not all restored to the same LSN, or point in time.

Knowing this, you can reduce the backup time by dividing up the database into filegroup backups, but the restore time may get longer, and will have to be practiced pretty extensively

 

[TheBugSlayer]

Hi Yelworcm,

Thanks for your reply. Are you saying that I don't need to restore the full backup, or any other backup, that restoring the one filegroup and ALL the transaction logs will suffice to restore the database to any point in time?

We are more concerned with reducing restore times, and speeding up transaction by separating groups of tables to separate disks.

Thank you.

MCP SQL Server 2000, MCTS SQL Server 2005, MCTS SQL Server 2008 (DBD, DBA), Training HOTT cert SQL Server 2012 Business Intelligence (SSIS, SSAS).