Restore Verify Only option vs Manual Restore My question is related to best practices with SQL Server. I need to put together a document that lists our various databases and that the backups we have of these databases are valid and have been tested and we know that they will restore properly in case of a disaster recovery scenario. I'm using the Ola H. maintenance solution which backs up the databases with the RESTORE VERIFY option and gives a "succeeded" message to indicate that the backupset is valid. Is this enough to be confident or should we still be manually restoring these backups to a test server and running tests?
Is this enough to be confident or should we still be manually restoring these backups to a test server and running tests?


To be 100% confident, a restore of database is required. You need a seperate server to do the restores. Since you are using Ols's backup solution, the entire restore and verify process can be automated using dbatools - Restore-DbaDatabase esp specifying parameter MaintenanceSolutionBackup

e.g. Below powershell script Scans all the backup files in \\server2\backups$ stored in an Ola Hallengreen style folder structure,
filters them and restores the database to the c:\restores folder on server1\instance1


  Restore-DbaDatabase -SqlServer server1\instance1 -Path \server2\backups\$ -MaintenanceSolutionBackup -DestinationDataDirectory c:\restores\


Also refer to my answer : Understanding the impact/risk of turning off “verify backup integrity” on SQL backup