Push Those Logs Away!

  • Actually, this works with servers of all sizes. Large servers might have issues, but it's a bandwidth issue.

    We aren't simulating log shipping. Instead, this is merely a way to protect the logs during the day in case the server crashes.

    Steve Jones

    sjones@sqlservercentral.com

    http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/sjones

  • Interesting. We also use IBM's Tivoli backup solution. Have you ever considered using their TDP backup client for SQL Server? We use it so that we do not have to have such large disk areas dedicated for database dumps.

  • Dislike the agent backups. Prefer to keep the KISS principle in place. Plus in an emergency (and I've had a few), I'd rather go to disk if I can before messing with Tivoli. At least with disk I know the network or Tivoli can't mess things up.

    Steve Jones

    sjones@sqlservercentral.com

    http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/sjones

  • Steve,

    We also use Tivoli and thought about implementing this solution, but then thought about the network traffic of copying all the files over the network. We ended up pushing the files to Tape as soon as the backup is completed. With this happening, the log backups stay locally as per the maintenance plan and a small script which can push the incremental backups to tape

    dsmc incr h:

    Can you suggest with the above pros and cons which is better of the two ?

    Thanks,

  • Probably worth an article to discuss these, and I'd welcome feedback on what people think, but here's our issue.

    We backup nearly 1TB a day of changed information. So our backups are pretty tight as it is. However, we also have a 1GB switched backplane in our data center, so the network traffic isn't outrageous and the logs are the really important thing to me. They will let me get back up quickly, which is more important that other things.

    In previous jobs, I've maintained separate backup network (2nd NIC) in the server to reduce the network loads, which is what I would do if this became an issue for me.

    If you can get the logs to tape during the day, then I'd be happy with a disk backup (of the log) and then going to tape. Since I don't have this luxury, I need to provide some insurance for our systems.

    Steve Jones

    sjones@sqlservercentral.com

    http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/sjones

  • >>>

    All good points. I'm a big T-SQL fan and therefore wrote something similar to ship logs to multiple other servers all in T-SQL. In addition you have the option of restoring a log onto a standby server for "warm" backup purposes.

    Why did I do this instead of using Log shipping? My client didn't want to pay for more than Standard Edition. My implementation allows for multiple destinations and flexible full and log backup schedules. It's all very simple really.

    I have the whole thing documented. Would anyone like a copy of the lot?

    >>>

    Hi there

    I just finished writing my own version of log shipping for a warm standby server for a client and am preparing to install it in the next couple of weeks. As this is my first go-round at this in a production situation, I'd love to see what you've done...

    Same situation, client didn't want to fork out for Enterprise Edition or an expensive failover package.

    Regards,

    Vik

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