backup database across one or more files.

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backup database across one or more files.

Author

Topic

richard102
Starting Member

25 Posts

Posted - 2013-10-07 : 06:13:31

Hi, I ran a successfull FULL backup over the weeked (set to Compress) . But it seems rather big on-disk. I suspect the old backup has NOT been removed. How can I check this out please?

Details
The 40TB db is backed up locally (I know) via maint plan, split into 4 files, on 4 drives. "If backup exists" is set to Append (I didn't want a backup that runs for two days to be set to "Overwrite", incase it crashed half-way and I was left with nothing).

Then (in the maint-plan) there are 4 distinct cleanup tasks, set to remove one-week-old backups from the 4 seperate files on named drives.

I wonder if the cleanup tasks can cleanup backups from with one accumulating file? (well, 4 files, on 4, disks, each 15TG on-disk btw)

Using the restore database gui from ssms I can only see one entry (one row) where I might have seen the old one (if it was there) perhaps?

I tracked down the actual text-log created by the maint-plan. And suspisiously I detailed a correct start/finish time (that I assign to the backup), followed by 4 other start/finish time-stamped of zero seconds.

any ideas?

Richard

thanks

richard102

richard102
Starting Member

25 Posts

Posted - 2013-10-07 : 07:33:43

Hi again

This is getting real confusing :). I ran "restore headeronly from disk = file1_of_4, disk = file2_of_4" etc etc
and got 4 rows returned.

The first column "backupName" is like this ...
~backup_2013_09_14~
~backup_2013_09_21~
~backup_2013_09_28~
~backup_2013_10_05~

thanks

richard102

tkizer
Almighty SQL Goddess

38200 Posts

Posted - 2013-10-07 : 12:41:32

This is the problem with appending backups into a single file. Never do this. Instead use custom code that doesn't delete the file until you have a successful backup as I don't think the maintenance plan logic can handle this.

Tara Kizer
SQL Server MVP since 2007
http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/tarad/

richard102
Starting Member

25 Posts

Posted - 2013-10-08 : 06:23:01

Thanks Tara,

My recovery plan is in two parts.

1) change the maint-plan (scheduled for next weekend) from append to overrite (As my 4x drives are 95% full, so I need to free-up some working space).

2) script backups (for the weekend after) to 4x files "(dbname)_1of4_(date).bak". And script deletion of 1 (or 2) week old backups on success.

... alternatively I guess I could just bite the bullet and delete (gulp) the 4 backup files next Friday evening. Ready for the scripted/tested/cab approved backup-job to run on Saturday at 00:30.

What do you think?

thanks

richard102

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