Sql-server – Practical way to temporarily shut down a database

USE msdb
GO
EXECUTE dbo.sysmail_stop_sp
GO

Will stop the server from sending mail. EXECUTE dbo.sysmail_start_sp will start up the service again.

One to do the backup and restore (running as an sa) and then creating a separate user that only has access to the PRODCOPY database, that then runs the clean up section of this script. Any thoughts on this?

This is a good idea. You can have 2 jobs

1. Perform backup and restore of PROD database to dev environments
2. Once above is completed, kick off the scrubbing script to purge old data.

Some things to consider in your script :

• If the users are connected to the PRODCOPY, make sure to disconnect them using

  alter database db_name
  set single_user with rollback immediate
  waitfor delay '00:00:05'
  alter database db_name
  set multi_user   
  

• Backing up PROD database, if you are on sql server 2008R2 and up, then standard edition supports BACKUP compression. You should use that as well.

  -- we need to delete the existing PRODCOPY
  

• Make sure you have Instant File Initialization to cut down the restore time.

• do not drop the database, instead restore with replace. With Replace will NOT require pages with identical data to be rewritten there by cutting down the restore time.

• Your subsequent script will fail as you are restoring the database, but still putting it in NORECOVERY. You should change it to RECOVERY.

  -- We just want to remove everything from this table
  

• A good coding practice, avoid using INFORMATION_SCHEMA. Instead use sys.tables. Also, always use schema.tableName instead of just tableName.

  The references are to Aaron Bertrand's blog that explains in more detail

• Change the sequence of shrink and rebuild indexes. The Shrink should be first followed by a rebuild or reorg and update stats.

• Use the new syntax of alter index rebuild | reorganize. To automate the above point, you can use Ola Hallengren's - SQL Server Index and Statistics Maintenance