Differential Backups Produce 55GB Files
Jul 16, 2007
We have a SQL 2K5 10GB database that, as part of the recovery plan, gets a differential backup every six hours. Log file backups occur every hour, and a full backup is done every 24 hours. Over the weekend, the differential backup produced a 55GB backup file which caused us a lot of issues besides disk space usage (log backups couldnt finish, mirroring broke, etc.). This is also the max growth size that the log file is set to. There are no errors in the ERRORLOG, or in the job history. It's as if the backup was successful, which I assume it was, but the file was sparse.
I should mention that our full backup is typically 10GB, log file backups are typically 100 to 500MB, and the diff backup is generally 1GB to 3GB.
Has anyone experienced this issue before?
What causes it?
How do we resolve it?
Thank you in advance for your help,
Greg
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May 2, 2002
I know that the differential backup will only back up information that was changed since the last full database backup, but I have process that I need to implement and need to know if differentials will work.
1. Perform full database backup on Sunday.
2. Perform differential backups Monday thru Friday (twice a day).
3. Perform a database restore on the following Sunday from the backup taken on the previous Sunday.
4. Perform differential backups Monday thru Friday.
At this point I would repeat steps 3 and 4 for the following weeks.
My question is this. Since I didn't actually perform a backup in step 3, but instead performed a database restore, will the differential backup in step 4 backup all of the information changed since step 1??..or will it backup all of the information changed since the restore in step 3? I'm hoping it will only back up the information changed since step 3.
Thanks!
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Jun 25, 2002
I perform a full database backup at night with a differential backup at noon each day. I created 2 devices to do this. Northwind (for full backups) and northwind_diff (for diff backups).
When the differential is run, it appends each day's noon backup to the northwind_diff file so the file doesn't really reflect only changes - it just keeps growing and growing. I'm using the following syntax to perform the diff backup.
backup database northwind to northwind_diff with differential
Is there a way to initilize the backup device(file) prior to the differential backup being done?
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Jul 23, 2001
Hello
I am using SQL 7 database maintenance plans to create full backups for all the databases on my server every night which expire after 7 days, and transaction log backups every hour on some of the databases which also expire after 7 days.
I want to add differential backups but the maintenance plan doesn't allow me to add those. How do I add them, and what naming conventions should I use? I want them to expire after 7 days, but want to backup every 4 hours.
Thanks
Steve.
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Aug 27, 2001
Hi, I would like to do the following;
Mon - Full Backup
Tue - Differential
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Aug 28, 2001
Hi, is anyone using differential backups? I would like to have separate differential backups but right now it keeps appending to one big differential backup. If they are separated the older backups can be deleted. How do you do this?
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Sep 12, 2001
I am setting up differential backups thru EM every 4 hours. I append to the existing file. Is there a way to tell it to delete the files older than 2 days thru EM. I looked at the job, there is now way to do this.
Thru Mainplans you can create differential backups, it doesn't show you the option..
Any clues will be appreciated.
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Sep 27, 2007
Hi Folks!
I did a few searches and found some interesting threads but was not able to understand much. :)
I recently jumped from support to a DBA position and am learning about SQL Server 2000.
My dilemma: We have a SQL 2000 server with about 500GB's worth of databases that has some jobs from the app locking up due to tape backups. I am performing Full nightly and 1/2hour transaction SQL backups. We run daily differential and weekly full tape backups. It is taking 14 hours to run tape backups daily, causing some of the application jobs to fail. So to test it, I stopped the tape job to run one night and none of the App jobs failed.
So, I am hoping that if I start running nightly differentials, weekly fulls, and 1/2 hour trans, it should work. However, I am not very familiar with Differential jobs as till today i have been using maintenance plans. :confused:
My ideal scenario is this: Differentials start on Sat morning and stop before the weekly backup runs on Friday and then delete the older file when starting a new one. Is this possible? how?
C= OS, D=Backup (Raid 0), G=Data (Raid 5), E=Logs(Raid5).
Any help would be appreciated, and obviously if I have missed some piece of information, please feel free to ask.
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Jan 11, 2002
Hi all
Can anybody explain why the size of a differential backup in SQL7 is MUCH higher than the one in SQL2000?
Do this test yourself: do a full backup of the pubs database in SQL7 , it will be around 1.5mb, do a differential backup, and it will be 2mb or 4mb.
If you do the same tests in SQL2000 the differential backup is around 200K.
thanks
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Jan 11, 2001
PLEASE HELP...
WE ARE DOWNLOADING THE BACKUP FILE FROM OTHER BRANCH OFFICE AND THE FILE SIZE IS GROWING LIKE HELL SO I AM CHANGING THE BACKUP POLICY TO DOWNLOAD THE DIFFERENTIAL BACKUP FILES EVERYDAY. BUT EVEN THE FILE SIZE GROWS DAY BY DAY UNTILL WE TAKE THE FULL BACKUP THERE. SO I WANT TO TAKE A DIIFERNETIAL BACKUP AND THEN IMMIDIATELY A FULL BACKUP AT THE REMOTE SERVER END. SO MY NEXT DIFFERNTIAL BACKUP WILL HAVE THE DATA OF ONLY PREVIOUS DAY.
FOR THIS I AM SCHEDULING A JOB WHICH FIRST TAKES A DIFFERENTIAL BACKUP AND THEN IMMIDIATELY FULL BACKUP EVERYDAY AT 12.00AM.
BUT I HAVE A CONCERN.. WHILE TAKING THE DIFFERENTIAL BACKUP ANY TRANSACTIONS THAT ARE TO BE COMMITED WILL NOT COMMIT UNTIL THE DIFFERENTIAL BACKUP COMPLETES. BUT IMMIDIATELY I AM STARTING FULL BACKUP. IS THERE ANY CHANCE THAT A TRANSACTION GETTING COMMITTED IN BETWEEN THESE TWO STEPS. IF SO IS THERE ANY WAY .. NOT RELEASE THE DATABASE UNTILL THESE 2 BACKUPS ARE COMPLETED?? I AM RUNNING IT AS A JOB..
ANY SUGGESTION??
THANKS IN ADVANCE.. :-)
KUMAR
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Feb 14, 2002
I am trying to set up a process where a differential backup is taken daily and applied to another DB. For some reason I cannot get the diff backup to restore. The full DB backup restored fine.
Server: Msg 3136, Level 16, State 1, Line 4
Cannot apply the differential backup on device 'diff' to database 'test'.
Server: Msg 3013, Level 16, State 1, Line 4
Backup or restore operation terminating abnormally.
Any suggestions? Thanks!
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Oct 19, 2005
Our production backup schedule is, FULL backup once a month and a DIFFERENTIAL backup every day.
We are starting the FULL and DIFFERENTIAL backups using something similar to
FULL Backup
backup database @DB to disk = @BackupFile
DIFFERENTIAL backup
backup database @DB to disk = @BackupFile WITH DIFFERENTIAL
A full backup was done on 10/6 and the DB size was 48GB. Since then we have been doing DIFFERENTIAL backups. I recently looked at the DIFFERENTIAL backup directory and found something I think is interesting.
10/07/2005 04:00 AM 8,604,160 prodDB_Diff_200510070400.BAK
10/08/2005 04:00 AM 1,144,320 prodDB_Diff_200510080400.BAK
10/09/2005 04:00 AM 1,134,080 prodDB_Diff_200510090400.BAK
10/10/2005 04:00 AM 21,185,024 prodDB_Diff_200510100400.BAK
10/11/2005 04:00 AM 7,119,360 prodDB_Diff_200510110400.BAK
10/12/2005 04:00 AM 163,669,504 prodDB_Diff_200510120400.BAK
10/13/2005 04:00 AM 14,743,040 prodDB_Diff_200510130400.BAK
10/14/2005 04:00 AM 120,875,520 prodDB_Diff_200510140400.BAK
10/15/2005 04:00 AM 1,216,000 prodDB_Diff_200510150400.BAK
10/16/2005 04:00 AM 5,139,968 prodDB_Diff_200510160400.BAK
10/17/2005 04:00 AM 4,277,760 prodDB_Diff_200510170400.BAK
10/18/2005 04:00 AM 2,778,624 prodDB_Diff_200510180400.BAK
10/19/2005 04:01 AM 750,575,104 prodDB_Diff_200510190400.BAK
My understanding of DIFFERENTIAL backups from books online is
"Specifies the database or file backup should consist only of the portions of the database or file changed since the last full backup"
MY Question:
Assuming I am understanding this correctly, all DIFFERENTIAL backups are independent of one another. If a failure happens, all I have to do is restore the latest FULL backup and then
restore the latest DIFFERENTIAL backup.
So, I would think the sizes of the backup files should be in ASCENDING order. Why is the size of the backup file from 10/15/2005 (1,216,000 bytes) smaller than the backup file from 10/14/2005 (120,875,520 bytes).
Assuming a crash happens on 10/15 5AM, I would restore the full backup from 10/6 and then restore the DIFF. backup from 10/15 4AM (Which will apply approx.. 1,216,000 bytes of data). So where has the data in the backup file from 10/14/2005 gone (120,875,520 bytes)?
Thanks
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Mar 28, 2007
Does the full and differential backups have to be in the same location or can I do a once a week full backup on one drive and everyday differential backups on a different drive?
Thanks
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Feb 12, 2008
Hi,
On our SQL Server 2005 SP 2 i recently updated our Backup Plan.
I now make a Full backup every night, Differential backup every hour and Transaction log backup every 15 minutes.
This all works fine all the time except sometimes when the differential and transaction log backups want to run on the same time and then 1 of the 2 fails.
The error i get is code 0xC0010018. Error loading a task.
I made 1 Maintenance Plan with a subplan for each backup type (Full, differ....), so i can schedule them the way i want.
Searched the internet for an answer but i couldn't find it. The tasks only fail when the run simultaneous. Starting them manually always works.
Anybody has an idea what i need to do to get this working properly?
Thanks!!
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Oct 15, 2014
I am using Ola Hallegren's scripts to do backups. He uses @Cleanup Time to delete backups older than a certain number of hours. My situation is I do a full backup of a database on Sunday and then I have a few Differentials and then log backups for the rest of the week. When Sunday rolls around again and my full backup is finished, I would like to delete all the differential backups and log backups. Any way that I could accomplish this using Ola's scripts?
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Dec 7, 2007
Hello SQL Server 2005 SE sp1.
Unable to take differential or transaction log backups. Get the error message a full backup need to be down. Have done a full backup. Immediately upon completion of full have tried diff and transaction log. Still no luck
Other databases on server are fine. Full backup will restore.
Thanks,
Joe
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May 12, 2008
Hi sql server experts.
This is a beginners question.
Let's say, I run a full backup at 4:30 am it takes usually 35 minutes to finish.
I want to schedule a differential backup to run every hour.
Should I start this job at 5:10 after the full backup finishes? or it doesn't matter?
I am confused about timing.
Let's say my full back up takes 1 hour to finish, that means that when the differential backup runs the full backup will be still running, so in case I need to restore the database, can I use this differential from 5:10 or the differential from 6:10.
Same issue with the transactional, the job runs every 30 minutes, should I started after the differential is done?
I am so confused, what happens with the backups jobs that run while other backups are running?
Is this something that should never happen.
Please advise.
Thanks
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Jul 14, 2006
Running SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition.
Database is in Full Recovery mode.
I have full backups scheduled weekly, differentails scheduled daily and tran log ackups scheduled for every 15 minutes.
The tran log backups only work for the first 40 minutes or so after the daily backup. Once the daily has occured, the tran backups will work again, but for only 40 minutes.
I run consistency checks on the db daily and there are no errors.
The error returned from the tran log backup is 'BACKUP LOG cannot be performed because there is no current database backup'
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
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Jun 15, 2015
We are running a SQL Server 2008R2 64-bit database system on a Windows 2012 R2 64-bit Standard system. I have noticed in recent weeks that our differential backups periodically are taking longer than expected to complete. The usual amount of time is about one hour, but on several occasions, it has taken upwards to five hours. The nights when the job takes longer to complete are on Friday.
I did some checking online, and one possible reason for this issue is my scheduling the reindexing of the database on the morning of the Differential backup. For example, this past Friday the reindexing occurred at 1:00 AM with the Differential running at 10:00 PM that night.The article that I read suggested the reindexing, which takes several minutes, if that, to complete, should be scheduled to run just before the Full backup job.
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Jan 9, 2015
I proposed on a new server that we separate Data Files, Log Files, tempDB, Backups, etc. onto separate LUNS on a SAN with High Speed Solid State Drives.I was told that with the new technology with solid state SAN's that it would decrease performance and that it did not work the same way as it did when you had RAID 5's etc.I thought that if things were cared out correctly by a SAN Administrator they would know how to configure for optimal performance.
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Feb 4, 2004
When a new scheduled job is created for a Differential backup, the file specified in the Destination folder is automatically created by SQL Server. After the first time the job runs, is there a way to configure SQL Server to give each Differential file a unique name, including the timestamp (i.e. similar to Full Backup jobs)? I noticed my only options are 'Append to File" and "Overwrite Existing File." If I choose to enable "Backup Set Expiration," the backup job will not run, because it wants to append/overwrite the filename specified.
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Feb 19, 2015
Using Ola Hallengren's scripts I do a full backup of a database on a Sunday. Then differential backups every 6 hours and log backups every hour. I would like to keep a full week of backups based off the full backup done on Sunday. Is there a way for me to clear out the diff and log folders after the successful full backup on Sunday nights?
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Dec 6, 2007
Hi,
I'm making backups of the database by first making a full backup and then differential backups. The differentials are backed up to separate files.
Restore of the full backup works fine, but I can't restore a differential backup. In Management Studio Express, I first do a full backup restore with option NO RECOVERY and then try to restore a differential backup. But this failes with the message:
"This differential backup cannot be restored because the database has not been restored to the correct earlier state."
Is it possible to restore a differential backup that is backed up to a separate file?
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Oct 30, 2015
I missed the ability to restore based on a time (10/23 6pm) due to our purge cycle in our production environment, but I was able to obtain the 10/18 full backup, the 10/23 differential backup, and the 4, 10/23 trans. log backups. I moved all the fore mentioned files to a staging environment, and now I am trying to restore all of the files to 10/23 6pm and I get :
"The log or differential backup cannot be restored because no files are ready to rollforward" error.
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Jun 26, 2001
Hello Group,
I have a SQL Server 2000 database that has never been backed up. The SQL Server database can't be logged into due to an SSL Security Error, thus I can't get to the backup utilities within Enterprise Manager.
What data files do I need to backup manually and what steps do I have to take to backup these files to a tape and rebuild the server?
Thanks
Kevin Kraus
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Nov 21, 2005
i have a maintenance plan running on my database, in which I told the wizard, on creation, to "remove files older than 4 week" and yet it doesn't seem to be doing so, as on checking this morning, diskspace was getting low, due to over 300gb of backups and trn' dating back to september.
Anyone have ny problems with maintenance plans not cleaning up when told?
a
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Jan 29, 2008
My scenario -
-Dev server lost all its raid drives (which included user data/log files and ALL backups)
-Raid drives were removed from server, so we could try and recover the data (not sure why they had to remove them)
-Recreating the user db's isn't an issue, but I REALLY need to retrieve the jobs from the MSDB (developer was working on dts package for the last 2 months, but didn't check it in to VSS)
-Since the System DB's (model, master, msdb) were installed on the C drive, I was able to recover their mdf/ldf files.
So we build an new server and recreated the user db's.
How do I go about getting the jobs data from the msdb database?
I've tried the following -
Started SQL server with the -T3608 and was able to detach the MSDB database, but when I go to reattach using the mdf/ldf files from the other server I get the following error message.
Error 5172: The header for the file 'C:mssqldatamsdbdata.mdf' is not a valid database file header. The PageAudit property is incorrect
I've been doing some research and found a lot of great articles on how to RESTORE (from backup - dont have) or Rebuild (wipes out the data I'm looking for) the MSDB, but not how to replace it with only the ldf/mdf files....
Any idea's would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
PS - All backups are now being copied to another server (lesson learned)
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Apr 5, 2006
Hey guys,
I'm wondering how most people manage very very large backups. What is the best approach to breaking up the backup files if you're restricted to a drive size (450gig in my case). I unix, you can pipe the backup to gzip and split, I'm not sure how the same thing could be accomplished in windows.
Thanks,
-Kilka
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Jan 8, 2007
Michael writes "We are running SQL and Veritas to backup the databases. Supposedly the SQL agent in Veritas, after a full backup, truncates the log files but for some reason this isn't happening... any ideas?"
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Aug 29, 2006
where in sql server 2005 ( and 2000 for that matter) do i find the path to the location where backups are placed (.bak files)? is there sql i can use to find this out
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Dec 1, 2014
Until yesterday I had a server running SQL Server 2008 R2 - with all the SQL Server DB files on an attached disk array.
The server died - so I attached the disk array to a new server - and all the DB data files are visible there.
I installed SQL Server 2014 on the new server and am trying to work out how to point it at the existing database files.
I also have backups of the DB's - but they will take ages to copy over and restore - so it would be much easier to just use the db files. Should I restore the master db first (easy as its small)?
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Nov 19, 2007
Hi,
I am cleaning database backup history as "Delete history if 4 months old" for backup file, and "Delete history if 1 week old" for Log file back.
lets say, I have disaster after 3 months, and I recover database with data and log backup files. Will I be able to recover with 3 month old backup file with just 1 week Log file backup. As I am keeing my Log backups only for 1 week.
Thanks,
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Nov 15, 2015
The space allocated to the Log in question is 180 GB. During this time period I was running TLog backups every 5 minutes, yet the log continued to chew through to 80 GB used, even after the process was complete and a final TLog backup had been taken. It continued to stay very large until the Full backup was complete -- or something else that I'm unaware of completed. Like every other DBA I typically take a TLog backup to shrink the log, but what appeared to be the case here was the Full completed and it released the used log space. All said, will Transaction Log backups not free up the log during Full backups?
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