Remove Old Backup And Tran Logs Thru Maintenance Plan Cleanup Task
Mar 27, 2007
Has anyone been able to successfully delete old backup files(*.bak) and tran logs (*.trn) TOGETHER using maintenance plan cleanup task in SQL 2005 SP2.
this is transact sql running in the back ground.
EXECUTE master.dbo.xp_delete_file 0,N'F:MSSQL.2MSSQLBackupibmdir',N'"bak" & "trn"',N'2007-03-26T22:21:14',1
This DOESNT WORK.
It works if I just try to delete only one of the things ie trn or bak files.
I noticed our log files are getting way too big. I found that a previous SQL guy had set up the following scheduled job with the TSQL statement:
BACKUP LOG DEV TO DevDailyTranLog with noinit
This runs every 20 minutes.
There's also a Maint Plan to do a Complete backup every night and a Transaction Backup every hour (could be set to 20 min)
Why do you suppose the BACKUP LOG job exists ? If the maint plan were set to backup transaction every 20 min, wouldn't the 2 jobs be duplicating each other ?
Also, I notice that the Tran Logs specified in the database properties seem awfully big (4 gig), shouldn't they automatically be truncated when the daily full backup occurs ? (full recovery model)
Feel free to call me and straighten me out or to get more info.
I added a maintenance CleanUp task pointing to the right folder I checked the include first-level subfolder box, and delete files based on the age of the file at task run time
I specified "delete files older than " 1 day
But the cleanup task is not working, I have to manually go a delete the files myself.
Am I missing something? should I run the maintenance task first? and then the backup task?
I have a problem with deleting old bak files from a Cleanup Maintenance Task. I have backups in subdirectories and I read in SQL Server 2005 Books Online that:
In contrast to earlier versions of the Maintenance Cleanup task, the SQL Server 2005 version of the task does not automatically delete files in the subdirectories of the specified directory. This constraint reduces the surface area of any attack that could exploit the functionality of the Maintenance Cleanup task to delete files maliciously. To delete the first-level subfolders, you must explicitly elect to do this by checking the Include first-level subfolders option in the Maintenance Cleanup Task dialog box.
I cannot find such an option in my Maintenance Cleanup Task dialog box. I do not think I installed any service packs yet, could this be the problem?
Hello, When I try to display HIstory for one of my Maintenance Plan, it takes forever to bring me those results back (up to 15-20 minutes). What can be the problem? What should I check?
I have the following issue with Maintenance plan backups that work for BAK DIF and TRN to a remote server share. When I try and remove the old files with a clean up task I get an error and the files don't get deleted.
The version is as follows Microsoft SQL Server 2005 - 9.00.3054.00 (X64) Mar 23 2007 18:41:50 Copyright (c) 1988-2005 Microsoft Corporation Standard Edition (64-bit) on Windows NT 5.2 (Build 3790: Service Pack 2)
The error result is as follows,
Failed-1073548784) Executing the query "EXECUTE master.dbo.xp_delete_file 0,N'\\EXECUTE master.dbo.xp_delete_file 0,N'\ABCD-A1\BACKUPS\ABCD_BACKUP\ABC_DAILY\ABCD',N'trn',N'2008-01-13T12:52:49'" failed with the following error: "xp_delete_file() returned error 2, 'The system cannot find the file specified.'". Possible failure reasons: Problems with the query, "ResultSet" property not set correctly, parameters not set correctly, or connection not established correctly.
The maintenance plan seems to be adding extra "" though when i enter the code directly in a query i get same error.
xp_delete_file() returned error 2, 'The system cannot find the file specified.'
The servers belong to the same domain and are using the same Service account which has all the necessary rights to the share and the file directory location. The backups work but i get the error on the cleanup task.
Trying to figure out how to get the Cleanup task to delete old files. The same happens for all file extensions and I have tried other locations with simpler file paths same error.
We have a maintenance plan in place for updating the statistics on daily basis. Now, i would like to remove the view from maintenance plan. How can i remove that from Update statistics task?
I am doing full backups on 25 databases nightly using the SQL maintenance plan. Recently I have started getting the backup process hung on one database, so the whole plan does not finish. The job shows as executing, but nothing is being done, and nothing has been written to disk for this database. The SQL logs show a DBCC TRACEON 208, but the process it refers to is using another database. The NT logs do not show anything going on either. Additionally the backup process will not die when it is killed. They only way to make it go away is to stop and start the SQL Server. The system is a quad Pentium 450, 2Gig of ram, and plenty of disk space. It is NT SP5, SQL7 SP1. The DB is about 8.2 Gig. There are no other jobs scheduled to run at the time the backups run. Does anyone have any ideas what would be causeing the process to hang? Also what is a trace flag 208, it is not listed in BOL. Thanks for your help.
I have a maintenance plan that I use to backup some of my databases and transaction logs. I have "Check Database Integrity" checked. If the database is being used by anyone when the backups are being performed, the check issues an error because the DB cannot be put into single user mode and then skips the backup. In the Plan, I have unchecked the box for "Perform these checks before backing up the database or transaction file" and apply the change. When I go back into the plan, the option is checked again. How can I get around this problem?
I have a maintenance plan where I backup the system databases and my application databases every night. Once a week I do a Check Database Integrity. For the Master and MSDB databases, it errors out telling me that the database must be in single user mode. I thought that the maintenance plan would switch the DB to single user mode when it needed to perform its checks. Any suggestions on how to get this to work successfully?
I'm running sql server 2000. All the backups created through the Maintenance Plan failed (no specific error code), whereas backups created by itself (through database name => All Tasks => Backup database...) run fine. Does anybody have a clue why the Maintenance backup failed or how to trouble shout the problem?
The reason I want to make the backups from maintenance plan to work is that each backup will have a unique name and I can schedule to remove the old backup files from the system.
We are running SQL Server 2000 with SP3. I have recently created a DB Maintenance Plan to backup all of our databases nightly to a local tape drive, and verify the backup of those databases. The backup plan itself runs fine.
The first time it ran, it ran in a little over an hour. Since then, I have noticed the time increasing nightly to the point that last night's backup took 8 hours. Our databases are not that big and do not have enough transactions to cause such a drastic change in a matter of weeks.
Investigating the problem, I have found that the issue lies in the fact that the tape is not initializing each night, and thus each night's backup is appending to an increasingly more full tape.
My question is this: Is there a way to force a DB Maintenance Plan to initialize the tape each night? I know that I can probably add a "with init" command to the T-SQL statement created, but I am not sure exactly where to fit it in. Does anyone have any suggestions?
I feel like a complete nitwit. I've been using SQL 2000 for about 5 years now and regularly set up automatic backups using the wizard for many people. I'm in no way an advanced user and have enjoyed some of the more user-friendly features of SQL 2000 such as the backup wizard.
Well now we have SQL 2005 and I can't find the "wizard". I did a lot of googling and found very little on this. The frustration is mounting - let alone the fact that I had to edit the registry just to be able to perform a manual backup in the first place... :-(
Apparently their is a "maintenance plans" folder but the only place I can find this is under "Legacy" and you can't create jobs there.
Has anybody else had this issue? Is there a bug in SQL 2005? I reinstalled the full version with all options selected and still can't find this folder. Am I just being completely "blonde"?
I'm about to embark on creating a maintenance plan to back up all databases on one of our SQL 2005 servers. I am looking for some advice on best practices for doing this.
I have it in my mind that i want to be taking a full database backup once a week, with differential backups on a daily basis and transactional backups performed every 2 to 4 hours.
Do i need to create three maintenance plans for this, i.e. 1 for full, 1 for differential, and 1 for transactional?
If i want to only keep the backups from the last week, is this done by setting up a maintenance cleanup task in the full backup plan to clear all bak files that are a week old? If so i'll also probably require one to remove the trn files also.
When using the backup command from the context menu in SSMS there is an option to name the backup set. How does this work when using maintenance plans as i haven't been able to find this option whilst trying out some of the features?
I'm sure to have more questions on this subject, but any help on the above queries would be most appreciated.
What is the method to execute backups from batch (.bat) files on the server running SQL Server. I have tried the sqlmaint command - doesn't seem to execute, looked into the xp_sqlmaint with no luck. I'm sure the problem lies in my lack of DOS batch programming skills. If anyone has an example of a batch file that executes a backup would you mind sharing. thanks
I am getting a failure on the db backup job of one of my maintenanceplans. It is coming back with the generic error message of,"sqlmaint.exe failed. [SQLSTATE 42000] (Error 22029). The stepfailed."I then checked the Database Maintenance Plan History page, but thisshows all the steps having run successfully. If I check the drives forthe actual backup files, they exist and look healthy too!There is plenty of space on the drives, so it is not that.I've checked the NT logs and all they say is,"SQL Server Scheduled Job 'DB Backup Job for DB Maintenance Plan 'DBMaintenance Plan for All User Databases''(0xC06E15E2A9E1414087BE19541D167861) - Status: Failed - Invoked on:2005-06-29 21:00:04 - Message: The job failed. The Job was invoked bySchedule 35 (Schedule 1). The last step to run was step 1 (Step 1). "Which doesn't give me any clues.Since the backups have actually run to success, I am going to take offthe option on the maintenance plan to "Verfiy the integrity of thebackup upon completion". Maybe it is this that is causing problems,rather than the backup?Anyone had anything similar?
I am using SQL server 7.0. After restoring all the databses (Exceptdistribution) Everything seems to be working fine except the backupmaintenance plan. I put following detail in the maintenance plan"General Tab:Plan Name --- DB Maintenance Plan1() All DatabasesOptimizations tab:Reorganize Data and Index PageChange free space per page percentage to 10%Remove unused space from database filesShrink Database when it grows beyond 50 MBAmount of free space to remain after shrink 10% of the data spaceSchedule: Occurs every 1 week(s) on Thursday, at 1:30:00 PM.Integrity tab:Chack database integrityInclude indexes.Attempt to repair any minor problemSchedule : Occurs every 1 week(s) on Thursday, at 1:00:00 PM.Complete Backup tab:Backup the database as part of the maintenance planVerify the integrity of the backup upon completionDisk use this directory: d:SQL BackupsBackup file extension: BAKSchedule: Occurs every 1 day(s), at 2:10:00 PM.Transaction Log Backup tab:schedule: Occurs every 1 day(s), at 2:00:00 PM.Reporting tab:Write report a text file in Directory: D:SQL BackupsLOG "Problem:My databases(mroduction as well as systems) sre not at all gettingbacked up according to above plan.Error Message in the Log Directory:"Microsoft (R) SQLMaint Utility (Unicode), Version [Microsoft SQL-DMO(ODBC SQLState: 42000)] Error 4062: [Microsoft][ODBC SQL ServerDriver][SQL Server]Cannot open user default database '<ID>'. Usingmaster database instead."In the SQL server registration properties the login through whichgetting logged into the EM for that, default database is "my productiondatabase".Is this problem because of the distribution db which I am not able torestore.Please helpDeepak Sinha
We're new users of SQL Server 2005. I created two maintenance plans...one to backup the database at 2 AM daily and one to back up transaction logs every 30 minutes. These maintenance plans write to a local disk. What we want to do, within the maintenance plan, is copy the files as soon as they are written to a remote server. Is that possible?
I have used google and searched these forums but haven't found an answer.
Here is my problem:
I have MS SQL 2005 DB I need to backup to tape daily. I want the tape to eject (or unload) when it is complete. I know how to do it with a manual backup (simply check off the option), but there aren't any options I can see with a Maintenance Plan backup. I would rather not do a manual backup EVERY DAY.
I really don't understand why MS makes this so complicated...why would the option be in another area when you use a maintenance plan???
I was once told that I was not to use the GUI to setup a maintenance plan. What the person said was that I needed to setup a different plan to do each tab of the GUI instead of going through the tabs and making sure the times do not overlap. Has anyone ever heard of this or is this an old wise tale told by only one person? I am using version 8 of SQL on XP machines with 8 connections to that database and need to back up the database, clean it up and everything the GUI has, so teach me the correct ways and tell me why, thanks!
Ever since upgrading SQL Server 2005 to SP2 build 3050 all my maintenance plans which begin with a Check Database Integrity Task are failing! If I remove the task from the plan they all execute properly. If I run the T-SQL equivalent manually it executes properly.
I upgraded the server to build 3054 and rebooted several times and Im still having no luck. What am I doing wrong? Thanks for your help with this. -Kenny
Hi, I have created an sql server 2005 maintenance plan for a daily backup. The plan has two 'Back up database task' i.e. one backup on the local drive while the second on a network drive. When the plan is executed, a backup is created on the local drive but not on the network drive. If i check the log, it says "Access Denied" whereas i have full access to the network drive with complete permissions to read, write and delete. Can anyone help me understand how to take a backup on both a local and network drive at the same time using a maintenance plan ? I shall be obliged... Regards...
I have a maintenance plan set to back up my 2 primary databases, one about 1 GB, the other about 2GB. I have about 4 GB available on the back up drive. I have set it to delete old backups more than 1 minute old. Problem is, the first night it works fine, the second night it sometimes it refuses to delete the old and therefore does not have enough space to complete the new back-up. Does anyone run into this before? Does it complete both back-ups THEN erase the old, in which case I need to have about 6GB available? Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. It can be going along fine for weeks then stop working. Any info or links to how this is supposed to work would help.
I have a backup plan that remove the old backup files more than two days. Last Monday, the SQL Server restart. Since that, the backup is fine, but it didn't remove the old backup files. Why and how to handle that? Thanks
Our backups by default go to a network location, but I'd like to modify our maintenance plans to backup to an alternative location if the primary location isn't available. I've setup two Backup Database Tasks where the second one runs only if the first one Fails, and if the second one runs (on first one's failure) it then sends a notification to me so I know this occurred.
The Plan is running as expected, when I simulate a bad path in the first Backup Task the second one runs and the notification is sent, but the Job shows failure. I'd like to show the job as Successful when this occurs since I'm handling the issue and notification within the Plan, but I'm unable to find out how. I've set FailParentOnFailure to False on the Plan and I've changed the MaximumErrorCount to 2 with the assumption that this would work, but neither didn't.
Also I'm running into this in both SQL 2008 and SQL 2012.
I have a scenario where i have to run update task on multiple servers in parallel and once all of them are completed (success or failure) another task is to be run on another server
1. in maintenance plan, if we add tasks which are not joined, will they run in paralled at the same time 2. if we link the last task to all the tasks with link type 'completed' will the last task complete after all tasks are completed or when any one of them is completed (i have big doubt here)
the business requirement behind this is to bring data from multiple servers into shadow copies locally and then process them together. its ok if some server data transfer fails, but its not ok to start processing centrally while data transfer is going on. further, we want to run data transfer from multiple servers in paralleled to save time.
I have inherited a server on which is a maintenance plan with two subplans on different schedules. In each subplan there are Execute T-SQL tasks with scripts for index rebuilds. Each task is set up with a Completion arrow to the next task and a Failure arrow to a Notify Operator Task. I was asked to add a task for index rebuilds to a specific subplan for a specific database, which is what the other tasks also do. I discovered that my task was failing but the others were fine. No notification was sent about my task failing even though the job is marked in MSDB as a failed job. I have sent a test email using the "Send Test Email..." option when right clicking Database Mail in SSMSand I receive an email so I know Database Mail works.
I set up a test job to model the index job that I can't get notifications from. I have two T-SQL tasks that just select the top row from a small table. The first task has a syntax error that I did so it would fail. I have a failure arrow to a Notify Operator Task and a Completion arrow to another T-SQL task with no syntax error which has a Success arrow to a Notify Operator task. As expected, when I execute this job I receive one failure email and one success email.
The only other troubleshooting step I know to try is to add a Notify Operator task before my failing task. That Notify Operator task will hopefully fire to tell me that the previous step was successful. I am not having problems with the other steps so I was just thinking I would try to get the subplan to send me a success email about one of the steps that has been working fine.
Created a maintenance plan to backup my sharepoint databases. When I execute it the following error occurs: Execution failed. See the maintenance plan and SQL Server Agent job history logs for details: Additional Information: Job 'SharePointBackUp.Backup_SharePoint faild. (SqlManagerUI) - Execute maintenance plan. SharePointBackUP (Error) Messages * Execution failed. See the maintenance plan and SQL Server Agent job history logs for details.
When checking the Maintenance PlansharePointBackUP log it is empty! Under Job History I thinks this: Date 4/18/2008 12:55:35 PM Log Job History (SharePointBackUP.Backup_SharePoint) Step ID 1 Server DESD7 Job Name SharePointBackUP.Backup_SharePoint Step Name Backup_SharePoint Duration 00:00:00 Sql Severity 0 Sql Message ID 0 Operator Emailed Operator Net sent Operator Paged Retries Attempted 0 Message Unable to start execution of step 1 (reason: line(1): Syntax error). The step failed. line 1? Is that line one of the T-SQL statement? Because if that's the case then it's not because I copied and pasted the line in to a query and it executed without error. Under SQL Agent there are no entries! So what bloody log am I suppose to be checking?! This is very frustrating. I then copied and pasted every sql statement in to a query and THEY all ran just fine.
What's going wrong here, and how can I correct it?
