Getting the Last Restore Date In SQL Server

Check out the solution in the video TSQL: Get Last Restore Date. I've faced situations where backups were failing, but we didn't have any warnings, so running this query and organizing the output by latest time can be helpful as an audit to ensure that we're getting backups (along with checking for files and validating them).

Some additional thoughts:

• You may want to retain this information
• An alternate is meta-file information

Be careful about third party software: while some can be helpful, we may over depend on them and if they have a bug that causes us to miss something important, we may not catch an issue before it's too late. This isn't to say don't use third party software, but be careful about doing so.

One regular point I like to remind my audience, especially as of recent: we can often solve the same problem with a variety of techniques. While we look at one or two ways to solve the problem, these aren't the only ways we can approach this problem. The most appropriate solution to a problem is one in which you can troubleshoot quickly in the future and one in which you understand. Be careful about applying solutions that solve a problem, but introduce new problems in the future.

A great re-occuring example of this is my discussion on alerting best practices. There are a variety of alerts everywhere for everything in today's development environments, but many of these alerts cause more issues than they solve (one of which is creating a distraction). Be careful about "easy" solutions which introduce bigger problems. Know your environment and where to apply the best solution. Of course, all these being written, it is helpful to learn new techniques to solve problems because they may be useful in the future.