SQL Server Database Corruption

Description

Database corruption occurs when data is not stored correctly on disk or I/O subsystem. The cause of the corruption is often a hardware issue on the I/O systems or a bug in the operating system, but corruption can be caused by a wide array of issues. The problem you will notice are errors when SQL Server tries to read the corrupted information. Within SQL Server the suspect_pages table in the msdb database records the corrupted pages whenever the page is read and an error occurs, CHECKDB finds it, or a backup operations reads it. This table can also be used within DPA to setup a custom alert so you are aware of the problem.

Alert Definition

To create the alert, click on Alerts > Manage Alerts tab and create a Custom Alert of type Custom SQL Alert - Multiple Numeric Return. We use a type of "multiple numeric" in case multiple databases have corruption at the same time. The query and alert will show the database name along with the number of corrupt pages.