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SThreeQL

A basic Microsoft SQL Server backup/restore utility for use with Amazon S3

This is a pretty naive backup and restore utility for Microsoft SQL Server utilizing Amazon S3 as the storage medium.

While not suitable for more advanced backup/restore scenarios, it is useful when:

  • You have root access to your database server machines
  • You maintain a number of databases on each database server (i.e., you manage multiple clients' applications)
  • Your databases are relatively small
  • You would like a single point of configuration for all of your databases on a machine

You will find that this solution works very well if, like me, you manage a number of client applications, want to backup at least daily, and want to restore the latest backups to a staging machine for up-to-date testing data.

Building

To build:

MSBuild.exe build.proj

The build script requires MSBuild v3.5 (on my machine, this is located at C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\MSBuild.exe).

This will create a release build. If you'd like to hack, you can use the Visual Studio solution for building. To do this, first create App.config files for each executable project (SThreeQL.Console, SThreeQL.Service and SThreeQL.Test). Copy the contents of App.config.template into each file. Configure to taste.

Configuring

All configuration happens within each executable's .config file. Basically, you need to set up your Amazon S3 targets, your backup and/or restore data sources, your backup and/or restore target definitions and any schedules you want to define.

Take a look at the SThreeQL.Configuration namespace for reference on what is required, what is inferred and so forth.

Please note that you need permission to drop and restore databases for each data source you configure. Windows Authentication is not currently supported, so you'll have to enable SQL Server Authentication on your databases.

Running the Console

Once you've created the configuration for your backup or restore scenario, I recommend that you run the console application (s3ql.exe) to test it out before moving on.

With the console you can run a single backup target, a single restore target, a single schedule, all backup targets, all restore targets, or all schedules.

To qualify what runs:

  • -a will run all backup targets and then run all restore targets
  • -b [-t backup-target-name] will just run backup(s), optionally only running the target identified
  • -r [-t restore-target-name] will just run restore(s), optionally only running the target identified
  • -s [-t schedule-name] will run schedule(s) and continue executing until forcefully quit with Ctl+C, optionally only running the schedule identified

Installing the Service

Now that you've verified your configuration is valid, you can install the service (s3qlservice.exe) and start it. See Microsoft's InstallUtil.exe documentation if you're unsure how to install a Windows service.

Please make sure that you've copied the console application's configuration to the service's configuration file (i.e., make sure s3ql.exe.config and s3qlservice.exe.config are in sync).

Coming When Time Permits

  • A local backup file cache
  • A history log
  • Notifications (email/web hooks)
  • GUI-based configuration
  • An installer

You should pester me about implementing these things as often as possible.