If you're interested, I have a backup stored procedure that deletes old backup files after a successfull backup.

http://ola.hallengren.com/sql-server-backup.html

Ola Hallengren

http://ola.hallengren.com

One thing that you could do is to only rebuild or reorganize indexes that are fragmented. This means that you reduce the amount of log records that is generated and...

You could use the Maintenance Plan option [Send report to an e-mail recipient].

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms180370(SQL.100).aspx

You could also create an alert on the error number for a failed backups. Then you will know...

Thanks. This bug fix has now been added to the new version. I didn't think about database snapshots, when I developed it.

Ola Hallengren

http://ola.hallengren.com

Thanks, Cory. You need to change one line of code in [DatabaseBackup] to have it dynamically skip databases that are in Simple recovery model, when doing log backups.

http://ola.hallengren.com/sql-server-backup.html

IF DATABASEPROPERTYEX(@CurrentDatabase,'status') =...

I know of SQL Farm Combine and Red-Gate SQL Multi Script that can execute a script against multiple servers. SQL Server 2008 Management Studio will also have this feature.

If you...

I haven't used SQL Log Rescue. I checked the documentation and it seems like it only supports SQL Server 2000. So maybe this was not a great advice. Have a...

I think that the security setup is easier if you create a normal T-SQL job that performs the backup.

BACKUP DATABASE MyDatabase TO DISK = 'C:\MyDatabase.bak'

Then you only need to grant...

You need a third party log reader tool to read the transaction log. I know of Lumigent Log Explorer, Red-Gate SQL Log Rescue and LiteSpeed Log Reader.

Ola Hallengren

http://ola.hallengren.com

My experience is that this is a very fast and easy method.

(Another thing. How do you have your backups start automatically on the mirror server after a failover? I have...

My understanding is that you have to do a manual failover.

ALTER DATABASE MyDatabase SET PARTNER FAILOVER

Ola Hallengren

http://ola.hallengren.com

Microsoft has as whitepaper on this.

"Generally, you should not be concerned with fragmentation levels of indexes with less than 1,000 pages. In the tests, indexes containing more than 10,000 pages...

I have experienced a number of issues with the Maintenance Plans but I think that most of them have been fixed in SP2. You have to install the hotfix in...

>SQL 2005 has report feature and you could be able to find out who has deleted.

This report is using the default trace as I understand it. It's good that Microsoft...

Thanks, mtassin.

>The cluster handles single server loss, and the SAN covers disk issues.

You could still get a corrupt database if you're unlucky. Then it could be good to have more...