A while back I ran across a blog post that talks about the difference between database snapshots and database backups. There are certainly some similarities and some differences, as well as an overlap in the places where you might choose to use each of these technologies. Both might be useful as a way to recover from a bad code deployment, but both aren't necessarily helpful for a DR situation where the primary server has a catastrophic hardware failure.

It's often the case that we learn only a bit about some of the technologies in SQL Server. That's understandable as the platform has grown very complex, encompassing a vast array of technologies and options. There is often some overlap between them and possibly different places where you might choose to use one or the other and solve a problem.

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