Re: @werdsmith
Taking a snapshot of the VM is often not a valid way of backing up a database as several dev's I have worked with have found out.
If you want to secure a database use the database vendor or 3rd party tools to do the back up. If you are only working on a single table, copy it.
If you a re working on a key table then FFS get some dedicated time for the change, perform it on a database copy first and the perform the change in production when the database is not being updated. Its not just your updates you have to worry about. I implement systems with 1000's of active concurrent users. Its a major pain negotiating a downtime window but that's much so than trying to unpick the results of a data maintenance update that went wrong when 100'000's of other updates were taking place.
Last time I implemented a SQL Server based application shadow copying/ snapshotting was not supported by microsoft as a way of backing up an active database.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
