backup over network

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backup over network

Ed-340023

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Points: 304
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December 20, 2007 at 10:14 am

#119489

I have 5 sites and I need to perform backups. The use of tape drives is out so I have to find another way to bring the data back. Over a network the backup is very slow that it can take the whole night. There are no third party tools to use and the databases are maximum nearly 2GB while tranlog is 1.6GB. I have tried to do filegroup backup but still need tranlog to restore so I cannot do it that way. I can do with one backup per month as a minimum. Any ideas please. If there are third party tools that are cheap might also consider.
I want to avoid scripting the databases every month as it is tedious.

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Jo Pattyn SSC-Dedicated Points: 32068 More actions · Answer 1

Why don't you use mobile/external harddisks? Backup at site, and send it over at certain intervals.

You can consider replication for critical data.

Do you have differential backups in place?

Are the backups compressed? (some backupsoftware have that option, you can also use free zip-utilities to compress it afterwards)

Greg Charles SSC-Forever Points: 45403 More actions · Answer 2

What about backing up to local files and FTPing them to the central location where the tape drive can be used.

Greg

SQL ORACLE One Orange Chip Points: 27807 More actions · Answer 3

Backup over network is normally not recommended. The reasons are:

1. It is slower than backups on a local machine. The performance of this server is affected during the backup over network.

2. An interrupt on network may cause damage of the backup over network.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor SSC Guru Points: 734434 More actions · Answer 4

SQL_oracle has my caveats for network backups. Don't do it.

If you have bandwidth issues, then you're somewhat stuck as the bandwidth is required to do the backups.

What I'd recommend is you back up locally at the remote sites. Then use FTP to pull the data back. Some FTP servers will allow a restart of the download if there are issues and many are scriptable to let you drive them with a scheduled task or similar job to pull them back.

There's no getting around having to pull the data back on a regular basis. If you could burn to a DVD (those are cheap now), you could mail it back. 4.5GB on those.

Ed-340023 Old Hand Points: 304 More actions · Answer 5

Thanks very much the company policy is that we shouldnt ask the customer at remote site for assistance and so that is why tapes,dvd writers are out. To try FTP does anyone have any idea about which FTP software to use? I would prefer the type that has scheduling functionality.

SQLBill SSC Guru Points: 51440 More actions · Answer 6

Why FTP? You might want to try adding another step in the job that runs the COPY DOS command and just copies the file over the network.

-SQLBill

Vivien Xing SSChampion Points: 12297 More actions · Answer 7

Back up to local disk, then copy over to the network. The local backup is handy whenever there is a need for recovery. It is faster than restoring from network.

Tony Mungor SSC Eights! Points: 850 More actions · Answer 8

Compressing the files before transferring on a slower network also helps.