Rogue transaction log backup

  • I have a database on SQL server 2005 that is running a transaction log backup every hour. I can not find what is running this backup. I have checked and there is no maintenance plan configured to do a tlog backup. I have checked the SQL server agent jobs and there are no tlog backups there except for log shipping jobs.

    I started a profiler trace to see if was being backed up remotely. Nothing there. The logs show a tlog backup every hour but not the source. I need to stop this backup because I have log shipping configured and it's causing the restore jobs to fail on the destination database because the logs are out of ssynch

    Is there somewhere else I can look for source of the backup job.

  • Something like NetBackup or another 3rd party component coming in doing the backup?

  • I am not familiar with Netbackup. I assume if it's installed on the server it would have a service. I looked at the services and I don't see anything that would lead me to believe it is installed. I don't manage the server though, just SQL. If it's installed on another server and the Netbackup application did a backup, would not I have caught that in a trace? I will check with the server guy and see if they are using anything like that somewhere else.

  • Yes typically you would have an agent installed running as a service.

    Have you checked through the definitions of any procedures which may be executing a backup log command and a job is executing the proc, so you wouldnt of picked that up when quering the sysjobsteps table?

    A central management server kicking off jobs?

    A job on another server which has the job_server setting of that job set to your logshipping server.

  • What's the error log entry from that log backup?

    Gail Shaw
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  • I looked at the sysjobsteps table and there are 5 records. Two of those are for tlog backups for the two log shipped databases. One is the Log shipping alert. One is a full database backup for all databases. None of these jobs run every hour. The fifth is a job that the vendor uses. I looked at the query and there is nothing in there that makes me think it's running a tlog backup unless it is well disguised.

    No central management server.

    I would have though a job running on another server would have been caught in a profiler trace. The only server I could think of would be our reporting server, we are using it for more than reporting. I will have to check.

  • 1. Have you checked the scheduled tasks also ?

    2. If scheduled task is also not configured to take the backup, most probably this backup is being taken by some third party tools like "backup exec" or some other tool.


    Sujeet Singh

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