What information do I need to send to get help with a SQL recovery? (4213608)

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

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 2014x64 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:

• What kind of additional information can I send about a technical problem to help resolve it?
• Critical steps users should perform immediately after they think a disaster has occurred
• How to choose and perform the most appropriate recovery solution after the data loss
• Recovery flow chart