VLDB - Create SQL DB Snapshot And Run Granular DBCC CHECKDB Commands

Question

I have a 25TB db (SQL2008 Enterprise SP4) that appears to not have had CHECKDB run on it in production. No idea if it was run against a restored backup somewhere at sometime. Right now I don't have space to restore a copy on another server connected to the same storage.

I need to be able to run checkcatalog, checkalloc and checktable but even for small tables it doesn't appear to be able to create the internal sparse file dbcc snapshot.

So I was wondering if I can create a SQL database snapshot on another drive and then run those commands against that and then drop the snapshot db once complete.

Thanks!

--Todd

Answer 1

I think Robert Davis answered your question in two posts:

How to manually create a database snapshot and get SQL Server to use it for CHECKDB:

http://www.sqlsoldier.com/wp/sqlserver/day1of31daysofdisasterrecoverydoesdbccautomaticallyuseexistingsnapshot

Performance comparison of CHECKTABLE commands run against database vs manually created snapshot w/ different options:

http://www.sqlsoldier.com/wp/sqlserver/day15of31daysofdisasterrecoveryrunningdbccchecktableinparalleljobs