What are some of the ways that you guys go about test-restoring your backups?

Is it automated or is it all manual? If it is automated what tools or scripts...

Thanks for all of the input everybody. Disabled the indexes and haven't seen any issues.

Would it be better to simply right click ->...

XMLSQLNinja (7/9/2012)

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Determining the performance impact of removing these unused indexes is important; understanding the impact of leaving them there is also important. In the past 14 years I cannot recall...

I'm going to get with the "owner" of the database and...

Another book I recommend is SQL Server 2008 Administration in Action by Rod Colledge. It has a lot of practical techniques, best practices, and even a recommended work flow. It...

There are probably hundreds of books out there for this. You've just got to find...

Thanks everyone - all good advice.

One of the issues we face is that we only have a 1Gbit network connection for our backup servers. It can take quite a...

Lynn - thanks for the input. I'm going to use this quote going forward: "backups are worthless, restores are priceless."

Grant - Awesome articles and examples. Gives me some ammunition...

This was much easier than I first anticipated....

Updated the script below to output to table (search YOUR.TABLE.NAME.HERE to edit).

This is a pretty handy script nonetheless....

--http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mssql/article.php/3914366/Collecting-Performance-Metrics-Using-SQL-Server-DMV.htm

--Script by Gregory A. Larsen

DECLARE...