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Christophermagee

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Navision Backup

Hello Experts,

We are currently having a problem backing up our navision server, the backup works fine however the incremental files it produces are in excess of 8 gigabytes. Our database is 50 Gigabytes and we haved tried just about everything shrink the incrementaks.  We are using acronis ture image server. Turning on VSS and off backing up from a non live database created by hotcopy but nothing seems to work. The server is running Windows Server 2003.

Anyone have any ideas on how to shrink the incremental to something reasonable in size?

Edit: Sorry i forgot to mention the things i have tried.
Running the backup off an offline hotcopy backup, also tried VSS however no luck with either.

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epernst
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Hi Christoffer,

My first advise to you would really be to change your database from running Navision's native database to use Microsoft SQL Server. Navision's own dbms was really only build to support small businesses with 5-15 users and much smaller database.

But to your current issue, then if I was you, then I would contact Expandit (http://www.expandit.com) who has an excellent backup utility that works with NAV's native database. This utility has a build-in compression option in their professional and enterprise versions.
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Christophermagee

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We are changing to SQL sometime in the near future however as you can imagine this is a massive task and databases aren't really my cup of tea. I can keep them running but as for functionality thats someone elses boat.

Changing Backup software is not a viable solution in this scenario, I was more after little tips and tricks to reduce the size. However thank you for the advice, just we like having a uniform backup solution for all our servers for a easier to manage disaster recovery.

The reason I am after smaller incrementals is because we rsync the incrementals via VPN to a backup site and well a 8gig backup file basically sucks up our bandwithh quickly our backup line has 100Gig a month limit (Which can be raised to 150) .  If i could get it down to about 4 gigs that would be great however if not its sneakernet every few days to our offsite backup location which as you can imagine is fairly annoying. We also have 3 other critical servers running their incrementals off this backup line and their combined total is about 1-4 gigs a day.
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epernst
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Thanks for the advice I will award you the 500, I was hoping that there were a few tricks to reducing the incremental size but I was also well aware that there might not have been.  

Well the whole upgrade to SQL Server has been outsourced but it does make me wonder why they are making it sound like sound a mammoth task. (Oh well I am unconcerned with the budget not my problem)  However I will mention it to my manager. Saying that I was speaking to them the other day and we are also going to the new 2009 navision (Fingers crossed its stable but like i said before that area isn't my concern)

We are replacing the server and installing windows 2008 which is my job and my tests in the virtual enviroment have gone well.  have you dealt with server 2008 and the new navision at all, is there any tips or tricks you could advise me on?  So far it seems pretty straight forward but I have never introduced anything new without experiencing at least a minor hiccup or two along the way regardless of how many tests or prep work done beforehand.

Hi Christopher,
Ok if they are also upgrading to NAV 2009 at the same time, then it is a big project!
What version are you on today?

Rgds,
Erik