SQL Server : How to Keep Database Restore History

Recently, one of our DBA restored a database on live server, but with old backup accidently. Later on, we have found that it was hard to detect which backup was actually restored. To check, which backups we have created for database we have a perfect script, which you can find over here and here. But unfortunately no such script found anywhere to get restore history.

Here is a script, we have used to create a job, which will fetch restore related log entries from SQL Server Log and will archive it to a user created history table.

	/************************
	Script Purpose: To Keep Database Restore Log
	Script By : Aasim Abdullah for https://connectsql.blogspot.com
	************************/
	USE master
	GO
	CREATE TABLE DatabaseRestoreLog
	(DatabaseName VARCHAR(50), RestoreDate DATETIME, RestoredFrom VARCHAR(500))
	GO
	/****** Start: Job step script *****/
	-- Table variable to hold intermediate data
	DECLARE @ReportSQLErrorLogs TABLE
	(
	[log_date] [datetime] NULL,
	[processinfo] [varchar](255) NULL,
	[processtext] [text] NULL
	)
	DECLARE @NumErrorLogs INT,
	@CurrentLogNum INT
	SET @CurrentLogNum = 0
	-- Get total number of log files from registry
	EXEC master.dbo.xp_instance_regread N'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE',
	N'Software\Microsoft\MSSQLServer\MSSQLServer', N'NumErrorLogs',
	@NumErrorLogs OUTPUT
	SELECT @NumErrorLogs = ISNULL(@NumErrorLogs, 6)
	-- NULL in registry entry for Error Log files mean default of 6 value
	WHILE @CurrentLogNum < @NumErrorLogs
	BEGIN
	insert into @ReportSQLErrorLogs
	exec master..xp_readerrorlog @CurrentLogNum
	PRINT @CurrentLogNum
	SELECT @CurrentLogNum = @CurrentLogNum + 1
	END
	INSERT INTO DatabaseRestoreLog
	SELECT SUBSTRING(processtext, CHARINDEX('base:', processtext, 1) + 5,
	CHARINDEX(',', processtext, 0) - ( CHARINDEX('base:', processtext, 0) )
	- 5), log_date,
	SUBSTRING(processtext, CHARINDEX(': {''', processtext, 1) + 4,
	CHARINDEX('''})', processtext, 0) - ( CHARINDEX(': {''', processtext, 0) )- 4)
	FROM @ReportSQLErrorLogs
	WHERE processtext LIKE 'Database was restored%'
	--For last 24 hours
	AND DATEDIFF(HH,log_date,GETDATE()) <=24
	ORDER BY log_date DESC
	/****** End: Job step script *****/

view raw DatabaseRestoreLog.sql hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Output of history table will be as following.

.