Blog Post: CRM 2011 Automated Deployments – Backup Databases

Another time consuming task of deploying software updates is backing up existing application files, configuration files, databases etc etc which adds to the overall deployment time. These tasks can be automated.

In this blog post we’ll look at automating the backup of CRM 2011 SQL databases before a deployment.

You’ll need to backup the following CRM databases:

SQL command to backup a database is:

backupdatabase<database name>
      todisk='d:\backups\sql\<database name_timestamp>.bak' 
      with format, 
      name ='Full backup of <database name>'

Take a look at the link below to backup a database via PowerShell. http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/900.how-to-sql-server-databases-backup-with-powershell.aspx

To backup the database using a console app/C# use the code below.

using (SqlConnection conn = newSqlConnection(this.ConnectionString))
{
    string path = Path.Combine(this.BackupDirectory, string.Format("{0}_{1:yyyyMMdd_HHmmss}.bak", this.DatabaseName, DateTime.Now));

    SqlCommand cmd = newSqlCommand(
        string.Format(@"backup database {0} to disk ='{1}' with format, name ='Full backup of {0}'",
            this.DatabaseName, path), conn);

    cmd.CommandTimeout = 120;

    conn.Open();

    cmd.ExecuteNonQuery();

    conn.Close();
} 

Enjoy!