What should you do?

Note: This question is part of a series of questions that use the same scenario. For your convenience, the scenario is repeated in each question. Each question presents a different goal and answer choices, but the next of the scenario is exactly the same in each question in this series.

Start of repeated scenario

Contoso, Ltd. has Microsoft SQL Server databases that support a custom application. The current SQL Server environment consists of two servers: ContosoSQL1 and ContosoSQL2. These two servers participate in an Always On Availability Group named ContosoAG1 that is configured to use synchronous-commit with automatic failover. The secondary replica is not configured for read-only access.

The application performs both transactional processing and historical data retrieval in a database named ContosoDB. The application includes an inventory management module. The inventory management module and database have experienced performance issues.

Users report that a query named InventoryQuery1 takes a long time to complete. The query is shown as follows:

SELECT ProductNumber, Name, ProductLine

FROM Production.Product

WHERE ProductNumber = N'<specific product>’

The query plan used by SQL Server for this query is shown in the exhibit. (Click the Exhibit tab.) Various performance issues, including frequent long-term blocking episodes, prevent business users from completing their daily tasks. You suspect the tempdb database resources could be responsible. You must create Blocking reports for the ContosoDB database to identify issues.

Exhibit.

You plan to use Extended Events to review all Transact-SQL statements that are run against the ContosoSQL1 instance. The output from the Extended Events session must contain both start and stop events and must be written to a file. You must configure the Extended Events session to minimize possible data loss and reduce the effect on server performance.

You plan to deploy an additional secondary replica named ContosoSQL3 to ContosoAG1. Read-only traffic must be load-balanced between the two secondary replicas, regardless of which instance is the primary replica. Contoso plans to add an additional dedicated reporting system that will rely on real-time data from the transactional databases.

The company plans to improve their high availability/disaster recovery (HA/DR) solution. As part of the planned improvements, you will back up all databases from ContosoSQL1 directly to an off-site location.

End of repeated scenario

You need to configure the backup process for ContosoSQL1.

What should you do?
A . Set the recovery model to Simple.
B . Perform mirrored backups to a DR datacenter.
C . Create a new backup set.
D . Perform a backup to a tape device.

View Answer

Answer: B

Explanation:

Scenario: The company plans to improve their high availability/disaster recovery (HA/DR) solution. As part of the planned improvements, you will back up all databases from ContosoSQL1 directly to an off-site location.

One of the features found in the Enterprise Edition of SQL Server is the ability to take mirrored backups. Basically, taking a mirrored backup means creating additional copies of the backup media (up to three) using a single BACKUP command, eliminating the need to perform the copies with copy or robocopy.

The idea behind is that you can backup to multiple locations and increase the protection level by having additional copies of the backup set. In case one of the copies gets lost or corrupted, you can use the mirrored copy to perform a restore.

Another possible scenario for a mirrored backup is deferred tape migration: you can backup to a local disk and mirror to a shared folder on a file server. That way you could have a local copy of the backup set and restore it in case of need and let the mirrored copy migrate to tape when the disk backup software processes the file server’s disks.

References: https://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/1779/mirrored-database-backup-feature-in-sql-server­2005-and-sql-server-2008/