Some days back, I received one query on my facebook page that user want to create Database Snapshot frequently & want to delete the oldest with same frequency. Quite interesting scenario. I did not go in deep why he has such requirement but I am clear that It can be done very easily.

So let’s do it. I have setup 2 scripts one for creation of snapshot & another is for deletion of snapshot. We can schedule a SQL agent jobs with 2 steps using these scripts.

Step 1 :-

DECLARE @CREATE_SS VARCHAR(MAX)

DECLARE @DT VARCHAR(100)

SET @DT = REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(CONVERT(VARCHAR,GETDATE(),120),’-‘,’_’),’ ‘,’_’),’:’,’_’)

SET @CREATE_SS =

‘CREATE DATABASE TEST_’+@DT+’ ON

( NAME = TEST, FILENAME =

”C:\TEST_’+@DT+’.SS” )

AS SNAPSHOT OF TEST’

EXEC (@CREATE_SS)

Step 2 :-

IF(SELECT COUNT(*) FROM SYS.DATABASES WHERE SOURCE_DATABASE_ID = DB_ID(‘TEST’))>1

BEGIN

DECLARE @DROP_SS VARCHAR(MAX)

DECLARE @SS_NAME VARCHAR(100)

SELECT TOP 1 @SS_NAME = NAME FROM SYS.DATABASES WHERE SOURCE_DATABASE_ID = DB_ID(‘TEST’)

ORDER BY CREATE_DATE ASC

SET @DROP_SS = ‘DROP DATABASE ‘+ @SS_NAME

EXEC (@DROP_SS)

END

Reference : Rohit Garg (http://mssqlfun.com/)

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