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 Backing Up and Flushing the tranaction log

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rcool24
Starting Member

1 Post

Posted - 2007-04-13 : 09:46:00
Hi could yous please help.

Our IT guy has left our company so I’m doing the IT for the moment so know very little about sql server.

I have been backing up our database using enterprise manager and doing a complete backup, which I thought was the right way to do it.

We have recently had problems with lack of disk space. An external engineer said that this problem has been caused due to the fact that I am not backing up properly, as I am not backing up and flushing the transaction log. Apparently I’m just backing up the structure of the database and not the data

When I do a backup through Enterprise manager and do a complete back up, does this not back up the transaction log and flush it?

They also told me that the only way to flush the transaction log is to by a separate application like Veritas back up exec to do this.

Could you please help and explain what they mean, are they right?

Thanks

rmiao
Master Smack Fu Yak Hacker

7266 Posts

Posted - 2007-04-13 : 10:25:54
Full backup does backup data and log, but doesn't truncate committed transactions from log. That's why log keeps grow and server runs out disk space. You have to do log backup as well if the db is not in simple recovery model.
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Kristen
Test

22859 Posts

Posted - 2007-04-13 : 10:54:19
If you don't want the transaction backups (which you haven't been making anyway) you could change your database Recovery model to SIMPLE and just make the full backup you are doing. You would lose the ability to restore to a point-in-time [between backups].

Alternatively you need to start taking Transaction Backups - I would recommend scheduling them every 10 minutes.

And if your TLog (the .LDF file for your database) has grown huge you will probably want to do a one-time-Shrink of that.

See also: http://www.sqlteam.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=55210&SearchTerms=How%20Backup%20works,What%20type%20of%20backup%20should%20I%20use,Automating%20Backups,Backup

Kristen
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