Article Link.

Thanks very much for posting and answering my question.

I'll definitely set up an automatic copy. It will get the job done, and that's all I really care about.

Also, it's nice to know that I'm not overlooking something obvious.

Alex

Hi

There are two ways in which you can run network DB backups.
Map a network drive and use that drive letter to backup to or create a backup device using the UNC name of the destination server. The only thing I would say is be careful as this will hammer your network if you have a very large database

Of course you can backup over the network. I prefer to use UNC paths because mapping drives under SQL Server can cause some weirdness (Hmm... maybe an article on that).

My favorite method is to not even muck with backup devices:

BACKUP DATABASE Foo TO DISK = '\\myserver\myshare\foo.bak' WITH INIT

Bam! Network backups.

As for Praj's warning about hammering your network, this is pretty much true, especially if you have a server with fast disks. If SQL Server can saturate the network link, it will, and the rest of your network may suffer as a result, especially if you're on a non-switched ethernet.

SQLGuru

One thing to remember when attempting to do network backups is that you must have SQL Server configured to run as a user with network access. If you let SQL Server run using the System Account, it will not have any network access.

Ok, it seems I was smoking the crack. But it was the good stuff :)

I have had success backing up across an NT network using UNC by I have had problems doing so over a novell network. Using the UNC gives me a "Cannot find specified path error"

Any ideas on how to do this.


JGR

jradgowski@csesoftware.com

>There are two ways in which you can run network DB backups.
>Map a network drive and use that drive letter to backup to or >create a backup device using the UNC name of the destination server. >The only thing I would say is be careful as this will hammer your >network if you have a very large database

What if the remote server can't access any shared disks on our servers our vica versa? Our remote SQL is only reachable through SQL, other traffic is blocked by a firewall...

Frank