August 12, 2016 at 3:19 am
Greetings!
Although originally educated in the networking field, my current duties at work (a small office environment) leans more towards the sysadmin side of things.
Thus it also falls under my responsibility, although I'm a complete SQL novice and layman, to manage and adminster the SQL databases currently in use by various applications here in the office. One of these applications is deployed on a virtual machine running the application server software as well as the application related databases (MSSQL 2008 R2 SP2).
It was recently decided that this VM should be used for something else instead and that the DBs should be backed up and removed to make room for whatever else is going to be installed on there.
However, I recently discovered that the databases are currently in Full Backup Mode, and that the last full backup was done over 5 months ago. No backups of the Transactional Log has been made and this has led the log file to grow and grow and grow, which from what I've read seems to be quite a common problem.
Since the application and it's databases are to be taken out of production, I just want to have the DBs backed up completely, have them stored in a safe place so that
they can be restored to their present state in case they need to be accessed in the future.
Will it be sufficient if I just perform a Full Backup on all of them and ignore the transaction logs, take the databases offline, then remove them from the server and then call it a day?
In that case, what should I do with the ldf files, can I just delete them manually?
Is this the correct way to do it, or am I missing something due to ignorance clouding my already confused mind? 😛
August 12, 2016 at 3:31 am
The full backup will be good enough to restore it back to a consistent state.
You do not need to do anything separately for the transaction log.
But can you be clear on what do you mean by taking out of production? Do you mean they are not being used currently or not going to be used any more?
To be safe you can analyze the connections/ activities for sometime and take the db to single user mode and take your final backup.
August 12, 2016 at 5:55 am
Thank you for the reply!
So the Full Backup is enough, that's good.
I'll try to clarify on what I mean by taken out of production. The VM is currently running a server-based Computer Aided Translation (CAT) solution. That is, a server that translators can connect to via their client CAT-software when they are going to translate a document, or that can be used by project managers when they delegate projects to different translators and so on. The thing is that this whole solution with client application included is very complex and confusing and very few translators want to use it.
The VM has just been collecting virtual dust for the past 12 months and the company wants to scrap it and make place for a similiar solution from a different vendor.
The new one will require it's own SQL databases and we would prefer to install it on a clean slate so to speak.
It is very unlikely that the old one ever will be used again.
August 12, 2016 at 9:56 am
Thanks for coming back with the clarification.
Looks like your database is mainly read-only not heavily used. So you would be good with a full backup.
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