To minimize downtime with your SQL Server database, you must make sure that you can quickly recover the database in the event of a failure with loss of production data. This means routinely backing up the database and being able to restore the database after failure. This section concentrates on database restore. For more information, see Database Restore.

1. You make sure that you have recent database and transaction-log backups. This is absolutely essential if you want an up-to-date restore of the database. Refer to Backup with MS SQL Server.
2. You work out how best to restore the database, depending on the failure that has occurred:

1. Restoring after a disk crash affecting the database or log
2. Restoring after a disk crash affecting the executables

3. You regularly test database restore using a test system as similar as possible to your production system.