CHCB is a healthcare organization running its production database on SQL Server 2019 Standard Edition. After a server restart, SQL Server began raising critical warnings indicating logical consistency based I/O errors, immediately raising concerns about the stability and integrity of the production database.

Business Challenges

Consistency errors following an unexpected restart put both reporting functionality and the production database itself at risk.

Consistency-based I/O errors

SQL Server raised critical warning messages indicating logical consistency-based I/O errors following a server restart.

Reporting disruption

Users experienced reporting issues as a direct result of the underlying database corruption.

Integrity concerns

The errors raised immediate concern about the stability and integrity of the production database.

Urgent investigation required

The situation required immediate investigation and resolution to avoid further risk to the database.

Project Objectives

Geopits was asked to determine the root cause of the corruption, repair the affected database with minimal data loss, and restore full integrity and application functionality.

Key Goals:

Identify the root cause of the database corruption and repair affected objects with minimal data loss
Restore full database integrity, data consistency, and application functionality
Ensure business continuity with the least possible downtime

Solution Provided by Geopits

Geopits ran a structured recovery process, diagnosing the corruption, repairing every affected table, and reconciling data before declaring the database clean.

DBCC CHECKDB diagnosis and backup restore

DBCC CHECKDB analysis and TempDB sizing validation were performed, alongside a restore of the last known good 818 GB backup to a separate database for comparison.

Targeted table-by-table repair

Of 26 affected tables, 6 were resolved by dropping and recreating corrupted non-clustered indexes, and 20 required repair operations in SINGLE_USER mode.

Zero data loss reconciliation

Row counts and repaired data were compared against the restored backup, with missing records manually recovered to achieve zero data loss.

Post-repair validation

non-clustered indexes were rebuilt, and DBCC CHECKDB was re-run, confirming no remaining consistency errors before application functionality was validated with stakeholders.

Results & Business Impact

The recovery restored full database integrity with zero data loss, within a downtime window coordinated closely with stakeholders.

Capabilities

Before

After

Database integrity

Consistency-based I/O errors detected

100% restored, DBCC CHECKDB clean across all 26 tables

Affected tables

26 tables corrupted, 6 index issues, 20 requiring repairs

All repaired and validated

Data loss

At risk during repair

Zero, missing records manually recovered

Downtime

Unplanned risk

~7 hours planned, 99.2% availability maintained

Root cause

Unknown

Traced to a likely infrastructure issue

Key outcomes

100% database integrity restored

All 26 affected tables were corrected and DBCC CHECKDB returned clean results after repair.

Zero data loss

Repaired data was reconciled against the restored backup, and missing records were manually recovered to prevent any data loss.

Controlled downtime

Recovery activities were completed within approximately 7 hours of planned, stakeholder-coordinated downtime, maintaining 99.2% availability.

Root cause identified

Root cause analysis pointed to a likely infrastructure-related issue, such as a power surge, storage subsystem fault, SAN connectivity problem, or unexpected server restart.

Conclusion

Geopits diagnosed and repaired SQL Server database corruption across 26 tables for CHCB, restoring 100% database integrity with zero data loss within an approximately 7-hour planned downtime window.

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