Drastically shorten your training time with WalkMe's advanced online training solution that Guides your trainees to action.
Course Of The Month
Become a Premium Member and unlock a new, free course in leading technologies each month.
Solved
What type of Scheduled Backup I should choose for SQL Server 2008
Posted on 2012-12-21
Hi,
I am looking for some advice on what type of Scheduled Backup I should choose. I will be setting up a SQL Server 2008(Std) and managing the server soon. About 5-6 users will be accessing this server on a daily basis mainly during 7am-7pm . I'd like to backup the Database to one of my network locations (another File Server). Main idea is, in case there is an event like server crash etc. , I should be able to restore the databse with minimum data loss.
So my questions would be:
1. Should I choose Backup features that SQL has or should I choose a 3rd party software?
2. If I choose SQL BKP, considering my scenarios, what type of BKP(Full/Differential) will be best?
Thanks for your advice and help.
I am looking for some advice on what type of Scheduled Backup I should choose. I will be setting up a SQL Server 2008(Std) and managing the server soon. About 5-6 users will be accessing this server on a daily basis mainly during 7am-7pm . I'd like to backup the Database to one of my network locations (another File Server). Main idea is, in case there is an event like server crash etc. , I should be able to restore the databse with minimum data loss.
So my questions would be:
1. Should I choose Backup features that SQL has or should I choose a 3rd party software?
2. If I choose SQL BKP, considering my scenarios, what type of BKP(Full/Differential) will be best?
Thanks for your advice and help.
[X]
Welcome to Experts Exchange
Add your voice to the tech community where 5M+ people just like you are talking about what matters.
- Help others & share knowledge
- Earn cash & points
- Learn & ask questions
5 Comments
Active today
Depends on what hte users / business wants.
I could see you do differentials every hour between 7 & 7 and then a full backup at like 1:00 AM
I could see you do differentials every hour between 7 & 7 and then a full backup at like 1:00 AM
What size are the databases? I normally perform full backups nightly in my production environments and backup logs every 15 minutes. In case of an event, you can restore the last backup + each transaction log file to restore to any point in time prior to the last days crash.
Active today
You could use this:
1. Weekly FULL backup executed sometimes in Weekend over night, let's say Sunday at 3:00AM
2. Weekday differential backup executed at 3:00AM Monday to Saturday
3. Daily transaction log backup at every 15 min.
The interval for the transaction logs can be different.
It all matters really about how big the load and how often changes occur on the database. With only 6 users is probably not to big/often but anyway, that schedule should work.
1. Weekly FULL backup executed sometimes in Weekend over night, let's say Sunday at 3:00AM
2. Weekday differential backup executed at 3:00AM Monday to Saturday
3. Daily transaction log backup at every 15 min.
The interval for the transaction logs can be different.
It all matters really about how big the load and how often changes occur on the database. With only 6 users is probably not to big/often but anyway, that schedule should work.
Active 2 days ago
Your backup strategy will depend on several variables.
How big is your database ?
What are the business requirements ?
I have some databases I do full backups of nightly with log backups every 3 hours (because that's what they wanted and they are OK with up to 3 hours of data loss in the event of a failure).
I have other databases that we do full backups of twice a week, differentials the other nights and hourly log backups.
If you're working with critical stuff like bank transactional data you probably want log backups very frequently.
Regardless of your decision, if you're running in Full recovery model, make sure you include transaction log backups in your strategy.
Growth of the transaction log file and what allows reuse of it seems to be one the most misunderstood concepts of SQL Server - if you don't back it up it will grow forever.
(Check out this site, there's been 3 or 4 questions on that particular topic this week alone).
For what you're talking about, Maintenance Plans scheduled in SQL Server Agent are probably sufficient. Be sure to include a Maintenance Clean Up task in the plan to delete old backups.
Also you should include a History Clean up task that runs once a week or so to remove backup history older than 60 days or so, just to keep your system databases tidy.
How big is your database ?
What are the business requirements ?
I have some databases I do full backups of nightly with log backups every 3 hours (because that's what they wanted and they are OK with up to 3 hours of data loss in the event of a failure).
I have other databases that we do full backups of twice a week, differentials the other nights and hourly log backups.
If you're working with critical stuff like bank transactional data you probably want log backups very frequently.
Regardless of your decision, if you're running in Full recovery model, make sure you include transaction log backups in your strategy.
Growth of the transaction log file and what allows reuse of it seems to be one the most misunderstood concepts of SQL Server - if you don't back it up it will grow forever.
(Check out this site, there's been 3 or 4 questions on that particular topic this week alone).
For what you're talking about, Maintenance Plans scheduled in SQL Server Agent are probably sufficient. Be sure to include a Maintenance Clean Up task in the plan to delete old backups.
Also you should include a History Clean up task that runs once a week or so to remove backup history older than 60 days or so, just to keep your system databases tidy.
Featured Post
Question has a verified solution.
If you are experiencing a similar issue, please ask a related question
This is basically a blog post I wrote recently. I've found that SARGability is poorly understood, and since many people don't read blogs, I figured I'd post it here as an article.
SARGable is an adjective in SQL that means that an item can be fou…
Occasionally there is a need to clean table columns, especially if you have inherited legacy data. There are obviously many ways to accomplish that, including elaborate UPDATE queries with anywhere from one to numerous REPLACE functions (even within…
There are cases when e.g. an IT administrator wants to have full access and view into selected mailboxes on Exchange server, directly from his own email account in Outlook or Outlook Web Access. This proves useful when for example administrator want…
Visualize your data even better in Access queries. Given a date and a value, this lesson shows how to compare that value with the previous value, calculate the difference, and display a circle if the value is the same, an up triangle if it increased…
Suggested Courses
Earn Certification
HTML5 Specialist - Certification
Free withPremium
Course of the Month5 days, 10 hours left to enroll
Earn Certification
Administering Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Databases (Exam 70-462)
$79.00$71.10
626 members asked questions and received personalized solutions in the past 7 days.
Join the community of 500,000 technology professionals and ask your questions.