Question

Maintenance plan not shrinking log

Asked by: rockethobbit

I have a maintenance plan that is not working as I hoped.

The database log file gets very big 4gb and I would like the maintenance plan to shrink the log once a week to keep it down in size. I have setup a database backup task and then a shrink database task, I do not see a shrink log file task, so I am assuming the shrink DB task take's care of it.

The task is not working, Can someone help me figure out how I should configure the plan to work?

Thanks.

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Asked On
2008-05-19 at 10:48:11ID23414532
Tags

Microsoft

,

SQL Server

,

2005 SP2

Topic

SQL Server 2005

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
9

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Answers

 

by: chapmandewPosted on 2008-05-19 at 10:51:35ID: 21599969

Does your maint plan first make a backup of the log file before it tries to shrink the database?

 

by: rockethobbitPosted on 2008-05-19 at 10:52:17ID: 21599975

FYI,

I am backing up the transaction log every 4 hours.

 

by: chapmandewPosted on 2008-05-19 at 10:53:38ID: 21599992

OK...after you do a backup of the log, try this to see if you can get the log down.  If it works, then you might want to take a look at your maint plan:

dbcc shrinkfile ('yourlogfilenamefromsysfiles',0)

 

by: rockethobbitPosted on 2008-05-19 at 10:55:20ID: 21600001

I can manually shrink it. I have done that multiple times before, I am trying to automate it.

 

by: chapmandewPosted on 2008-05-19 at 10:56:52ID: 21600016

OK...so it does shrink when you do the shrinkfile?  Thats good (means that you don't have a lot of uncommitted transactions).

What options do you have enabled on your maint plan?

 

by: rockethobbitPosted on 2008-05-19 at 11:02:45ID: 21600058

I am shaking my head. The SQL server agent was not started, and for the past week it has not run. I am assuming the maintenance plans are controlled by the server agent?

 

by: chapmandewPosted on 2008-05-19 at 12:28:14ID: 21600765

Yes, they are.  :)  They are jobs.

 

by: bhr1900Posted on 2009-09-03 at 07:23:07ID: 25250960

The 'solution' didn't seem an answer.  Does picking shring the database also shrink the log file.  Because if so it isn't working for me.  I put a separate maintenance plan only to shrink an hour later making sure it would be later than the log file backup.  But it still didn't shrink last night.  I manually shrank it this morning fine.

 

by: rockethobbitPosted on 2009-09-03 at 12:33:43ID: 25254125

The transaction log should get shrunk after the backup run's once the transactions are commited to the database. Make a FULL backup then run the shink job and it should work.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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