Differential Backup Blocking Trans Log Backup

  • Hi,

    I have a maintenance plan that runs a differential backup every 4 hours and a separate job that backs up logs every 15 mins.

    Sometimes their schedules clash and the jobs tried run at the same time and 1 gets blocked for a bit.

    I thought in SQL 2008 DB backups and logs backup wouldn't block each other?

    Should I change the schedules so the jobs don't run at the same time?

  • Full and log backups don't block each other (since SQL 2005), don't know about diff and log.

    Gail Shaw
    Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
    SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability

    We walk in the dark places no others will enter
    We stand on the bridge and no one may pass
  • is there anything else that your backup does apart from backing up the database?

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    "Ya can't make an omelette without breaking just a few eggs" 😉

  • Nothing else is running. Its just a standard log backup and diff backup.

  • Is it a custom script, can you post details of what it does?

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    "Ya can't make an omelette without breaking just a few eggs" 😉

  • Backup operations do not take locks on user objects. Backups do cause a really heavy read load on the I/O subsystem so it might *look* like the workload is being blocked, but it isn't really. It's just being slowed down. There's a special case where a backup that has to pick up bulk-logged extents will take a file lock which could block a checkpoint operation – but DML is never blocked.

    Regards,
    Kumar

  • KumarSQLDBA (3/12/2013)


    There's a special case where a backup that has to pick up bulk-logged extents will take a file lock which could block a checkpoint operation – but DML is never blocked.

    No one's saying that it is, the OP's not complaining about DML being blocked.

    Gail Shaw
    Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
    SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability

    We walk in the dark places no others will enter
    We stand on the bridge and no one may pass
  • This is the info captured from redgates SQL Monitor. Both these jobs are done using maintenance plans with one step to do the backup, no custom scripts here.

    Process ID:84

    Database:XXXX

    Host:XXXX

    User:xxxxx

    Start time:4:00 PM

    SQL fragment:BACKUP LOG [XXXX] TO DISK = N'D:\XXXXX_backup_2013_03_10_160003_3778311.trz' WITH NOFORMAT, NOINIT, NAME = N'XXXX_backup_2013_03_10_160003_3748308', SKIP, REWIND, NOUNLOAD, STATS = 10

    Blocking process:

    Process ID:85

    Database:XXXX

    Host:XXXX

    User:xxxxx

    Start time:4:00 PM

    SQL fragment:BACKUP DATABASE [XXXX] TO DISK = N'D:\XXXX_backup_2013_03_10_160003_3778311.dfz' WITH DIFFERENTIAL , NOFORMAT, NOINIT, NAME = N'XXXX_backup_2013_03_10_160003_3758309', SKIP, REWIND, NOUNLOAD, STATS = 10

    Before this block there was a previous block 4 hours before on the main Backup:

    Blocked process:

    Process ID:85

    Database:XXXX

    Host:XXXX

    User:xxxxx

    Start time:12:00 PM

    SQL fragment:BACKUP DATABASE [XXXX] TO DISK = N'D:\XXXX_backup_2013_03_10_120003_8706785.dfz' WITH DIFFERENTIAL , NOFORMAT, NOINIT, NAME = N'XXXX_backup_2013_03_10_120003_8686785', SKIP, REWIND, NOUNLOAD, STATS = 10

    Blocking process:Unknown

    Process ID:13

    Database:

    Host:

    User:Unknown

    Start time:1:47 AM

    SQL fragment:Unknown

    On inspection of SPID 13 this tempdb - Command CHECKPOINT

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