Well, Today will be one of my Most memorable days in my SQL Server Career! Anyone Curious Why?? We got a Database Backup from one of our Vendors sizing 6 PB!!!!@$@$$%$@!!!! Yes, You are reading it right. It’s 6000 Tera Bytes! Let me tell you guys the story in short…
It was just an another typical day for our DBA team and we all were busy with some routine tasks and some ongoing projects…All of a sudden, one of our DBAs was all excited to see a Backup file on a Network Share with a size of 6PB and..we all went to his cube for double checking the size of file what windows is showing. Yes, he was correct…That’s the largest Backup file(Well, any file in that matter) which I never saw in my entire life so far!
See the Screenshot below….
Please Ignore the Ugly Black Spots and just look at the size 😀
Well, am not sure if we could ever restore that file with native methods. First of all, is it a valid Backup file? Am not sure! What in the world are they storing in that Database? I Don’t Know…Even I’m very very curious to see what it turns out ultimately. I’ll chase my fellow DBA for sure to see what is this all about 😀
I just couldn’t stop sharing this with you all before I get more info on this. I Bet, this is the largest Backup File you might’ve ever seen(for maximum viewers of this post)!
If this is a valid Backup file and If the Database Size is really 6 PB, Then, I can proudly shout, our team supported one of the worlds largest SQL Server Databases 😀
I can’t even imagine how to maintain such a huge Database with all routine Maintenance tasks which a typical SQL Server Database needs!!!
MSSQLTREK 
Even I am curious to see the outcome and steps to get it restored by “any means”.
May i know will it be restored and to be operated with daily/week maintenance, how long the cold/hot backup take(more than 24 hrs)?
That’s definitely the largest backup file I’ve ever seen.
This is interesting topic. So what was the outcome? Were you able to restore the database? Also what was the restored size as backups are usually compressed? Thanks.
As we suspected, It’s a Sparse File which Vendor Created 🙂 I Know…I Know It’s strange, but that is what we received!