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 Need Help Creating a Backup Schedule

Author  Topic 

ericb
Starting Member

2 Posts

Posted - 2005-08-12 : 10:24:00
SQL2000, started a job and inherited sloppy backups, basically just full backups every day and transaction logs created in sql7

I'd like to start fresh, creating and organizing a new backup plan. From a book I read, it says that an effective strategy can be used doing only full backups once or twice a week, and then doing differential bkups every day, and transaction logs every 30 minutes to an hour or so.

Is this the best/simplist method? Do I need to append the transaction logs? Or should every backup create a new transaction log?

Also, should I separate the the user db's from the system db's? How often do I need to backup the system db's?

Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks!

tkizer
Almighty SQL Goddess

38200 Posts

Posted - 2005-08-12 : 14:04:26
We perform full backups once per night and transaction log backups every 15 minutes due to the criticality of our data. We prefer that every backup gets its own file with a timestamp in the filename. It makes it easier for RESTOREs and easier to find what you are looking for in the file system.

We don't do any differential backups.

We backup the system databases every night.

Here's a link to the database maintenance routines that I wrote:
http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/tarad/archive/2004/07/02/1705.aspx

Tara
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ericb
Starting Member

2 Posts

Posted - 2005-08-12 : 14:20:28
Thanks Tara, appreciate the help.

So no real need for differential backups? If I understand correctly, the differential backups make the transaction logs smaller, and thus the restores easier. But I'm terribly new to all this :-)

Do I need to make a new transaction log every X minutes, or do I just keep appending to the same one?

Thanks again!
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tkizer
Almighty SQL Goddess

38200 Posts

Posted - 2005-08-12 : 14:39:03
We don't ever append to our files. We always create new files. It's up to you what you want to do, but I'd say most people here create new ones each time.

Our tlog backups are pretty small since we do them every 15 minutes. And we've got databases that are several gigabytes in size.

Tara
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