where are you storing your backups?

  • We have talked quite a bit about using SQL backup to do dumps to disk. How much do you store to disk before you ftp it off or move it off with a file backup agent? I'm just trying to get an idea of how much extra disk capacity I should plan for.

    Wes

  • Im currently keeping 3 days worth. Got burned once only keeping one day, tape backup job failed, next night it deleted the file, a day later I needed the backup - no good! Saves a LOT of hassle when you find out you need to restore, no waiting on your admin to find the tape, restore, etc.

    Andy

  • haha.. had the same thing happen to be Andy around 2 years back 🙂

    I also keep 3 days of FULL backups and 5 days of logs (because they are small and I have heaps of free space). Put in some disk space monitoring scripts and make a decision from there.

    Cheers

    Chris


    Chris Kempster
    www.chriskempster.com
    Author of "SQL Server Backup, Recovery & Troubleshooting"
    Author of "SQL Server 2k for the Oracle DBA"

  • Well my new backup script looks at disk free space before it writes any backups to local disk it also verifies that the backup was moved to the ftp and is good there before it deletes any files off the local machine. The code isn't elegant but it does work. 🙂

    Wes

  • What we do is only the keep the latest backup on disk on the SQL Server itself. All over backups are moved over and renamed on a server dedicated for holding backups. Granted, we don't have any really large databases (nothing more than a few gig).

    We don't use FTP, though, since our backup server doesn't have that service running. As a result, we use VBScript and File Scripting Object to copy the file over under a new name. How far back we keep on the backup server is determined by the requirements we've been given for on-site backups.

    K. Brian Kelley

    bk@warpdrivedesign.org

    K. Brian Kelley
    @kbriankelley

  • I work like Brian. One backup only locally and then 2 days remotely.

    The remote backups are on tape within 20 minutes of being copied.

    I use FTP because it is the more flexible (can work with non-MS OS).

    Steve Jones

    steve@dkranch.net

  • yeah, our spool server is a solaris box we hold at least one days worth on that box and the rest gets pulled to tape at our leasure.

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