The Backup - Days Since Last Full Backup Alarm becomes active when Spotlight detects that a full backup on the SQL Server database has never taken place or has not taken place in the last three days.

When this alarm is raised:

  • Check the date and time of the last backup from the Databases drilldown | Databases grid.
  • Ensure you have appropriate backups of all necessary databases.

To configure the Backup - Days since Last Full Backup alarm

  1. Open the Spotlight Client.
  2. From the Spotlight Overview page, right-click the Databases button and select Alarm Settings
  3. Select Backup - Days since Last Full Backup
  4. Select Override the default settings for the alarm

Use the Severity table to customize the number of days and the severity. By default 0 to 3 days is Normal. A High severity alarm is raised after 3 days. Click in the table to edit the values. Decimal values can be used to indicate portions of a day. For example you could edit the table to raise a high severity alarm after 3.5 (3 and a half) days or 3.25 (3 and a quarter days).

To exclude certain databases, in the lower right pane, in Do not raise an alarm for certain values, click the values link to add the name of the database you want excluded.

By default, the following databases are automatically excluded from the Backup alarms:

  • model
  • pubs
  • Northwind
  • AdventureWorks
  • QuestSoftware
  • QuestWorkDatabase
  • tempdb