Not 100% solid on backup's

  • Hello,

    I am managing a few databases and I am still on shakey ground with backup's and restoring.

    The DB's are for web app's. What I did was back up everyday at midnight, and set the transaction logs for every 4 hours. I have the backups and transaction logs overwritting themselves after a day (I don't want to take up too much drive space).

    Question: Does that sound like a reasonable plan?

    I figured if I am doing a full backup every night, why bother keeping transaction logs for more than a day. Right?

    Thanks

    J

  • That sounds reasonable to me. I'm assuming file system backups also copy the db/log backups to offline media daily too?

    I often keep 2 days worth of both db and log backups, but that's just a personal choice, just in case I want to refer to them (which I very rarely do), and is also dependent on disk space availability.

    Cheers,

    - Mark


    Cheers,
    - Mark

  • Not a bad start. I definitely recommend 2 days on disk if you have the space, the reason is that sometimes the backup to tape (you didnt mention, but a good idea) fails. I'd also recommend doing the log backup a little more frequently. It's not expensive and you wind up with about the same amount of disk space used - the reason is you keep your transaction log smaller and have the additional safety of having it backed up.

    If you haven't done a restore yet, give it a try before you really need to do it under pressure.

    Andy

    http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/awarren/

  • Onw more thing to add. If your user's have the ability to delete data, you may want to archive your full backups once a week (4 to 8 of them), drive space permitting.

    I have had to go back a few times, due to corruption, deletions, and tape failures.

  • quote:


    I'd also recommend doing the log backup a little more frequently. It's not expensive and you wind up with about the same amount of disk space used - the reason is you keep your transaction log smaller and have the additional safety of having it backed up.


    I agree with Andy, a smaller time interval is better. I usually use 1 hour, but I would rather have the headache on restore than trying to figure out what was lost. It is a necessity if you do not want to lose data should there be a catastrophic failure.

    Joe Johnson

    NETDIO,LLC.


    Joe Johnson
    NETDIO,LLC.

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