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)?
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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?
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
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??
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.
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?
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!!
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?
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.
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?
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?
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'
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.
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?
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?
Thru maintenance plan I backup my DBs every night and the T-Logs every hour. Now I have to set the option "select into/bulk copy" on one DB. I schedule the differential backup every 3 hour with option "overwrite existing media", wich is, in my case, one file on disk. My sequence of T-Logs is valid even if a non logged operations occurs? If I have to restore this DB can I use the last full backup + the differential backup + all the logs in between?
I trying to created a Differential backup and I get the following error. Can anyone help?
The volume on device 'd:MSSQL7BACKUPCPIDATABKUP.BAK' is not part of a multifamily (RAID) media set. Use WITH FORMAT to form a new RAID set. [SQLSTATE 42000] (Error 3259) Backup or restore operation terminating abnormally. [SQLSTATE 42000] (Error 3013). The step failed.
I'm trying to create a differential backup job that run hourly and that creates a different differential files. Ext. dbfilename1am, dbfilename2am, dbfilename3am ect... Can I do this with one job? Are do I have to create a differential backup job for each hour?
I've defined a maintenance plan in SQL2005, which creates a differential backup of a DB daily. Suppose I'm having differential backups from May, 10 to May, 14 but backup files of May 12 and May 13 are lost (deleted unexpectedly). Am I losing some data, if I restore from backup file of May 14?
I'm lost. We have Sql Server 2005 on a remote box (A) and the local pc (B). Both servers have a single database on them. We've been copying the database A to B for some time and its becoming tiresome. I've heard of replication but couldnt figure out what the MS site was saying.
How do i go about making a differential copy of the A database onto B?
Currently run a weekly (full) backup and a daily (differential) backup.
When I format the server and rebuild I restored the DB using the weekly (full) backup and all worked as it should.
When I format the server and rebuild I attempted to restore the DB using the daily (differential) backup - I got the following error: 'SPCDBDIF.BAK ' is not part of a multiple family media set. BACKUP WITH FORMAT can be used to form a new media set. RESTORE HEADERONLY is terminating abnormally. (MS SQL Server, Error: 3259)
I am sure I am not using the differential file properly. What is the proper method to restore a DB and use a differential backup?
I need to make sure that my databases are backed up every hour so they can be recovered. What should I be doing? Transaction log backups every hour or differental backups every hour? I assume differental is better because it is cumlative, but would take up more space. Also, how long are they worth keeping around. I was thing for a day until the next full backup is run. Any thoughts?
I am using SSIS to replicate data from an AS400 mainframe to a SQL destination. I am using a lookup column to see if the primary key is duplicated and if not, it will INSERT the row. This is all working fine. What I need to know is can I also use the Lookup transformation to look for differential data and then UPDATE the row? The primary key of the table will never change, however the data might and I need the package to recognize that this is a modified row on the mainframe and that the same row on the SQL destination server needs to be updated.
I need to replication a server database out side a firewall. But can't change the server configuring for replication, so replication is out. So I wanted to know if I have a full backup of every db send to me every 24hrs. W/ differential every hr, will the restoring process work on the restoring server? Should I restored the full 1st? I'm not sure if the restoring of the Differential will work. Any help on the steps to take, to get this to work with backups & differential will be greatly appreciated.
I'm trying to run a differential backup on our new 7.0 box. It fails with an error message number 3242 "The file on Device 'E:MyFile' is not a valid Microsoft Tape Format backup set."
Why "Tape Format" if I said "Backup database [mydb] to disk"?..
When I run exactly the same query without "Differential" I got a full db backup.
I have a DB on a SQL server version SQL 2000. I have copied over one table onto a different server into a newly created DB. This DB is on SQL 2005.
The tables are identical in structure.
Now I need to copy over the differential from the Source table on the SQL 2000 server into the table on the destination server which is SQL 2005 on a daily basis.
What is the best way of doing this? It is just 1 table, I do not need the entire DB.
This table does hold a lot of records and on a daily basis there will be roughly 20,000 that need to be copied over. One of the main reasons for the differential only is that these 2 servers are physically located on different continents so the connection speed is not that great.
The table in the Source holds about 36 million records already (which I copied over to get the initial start).
Any ideas, help, suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks, Michiel
