backup question

[tao jiang]

Hi. This is a simple question. I need to backup a database and keep the dump for three days, say I need backup.1, backup.2, and backup.3. How do you setup a NT job to do that? I wrote a UNIX shell script to handle this before, but I am new to NT.
thanks

[James May]

One very good way is to create a Database Maintenance Plan. Check out the Complete Backup tab and pay attention to the check box “Remove files older than:”.

There are nuances, for example if you’re dumping to disk and on the fourth day the job finishes one second ahead of seventy-two hours from the first day, the older dump won’t be whacked and you’ll need to have disk space to accommodate the extra dump. Also, if you’re doing things with the dumps, you might have to do some string manipulation because of the way SQL names them, e.g., Northwind_db_200101041436.BAK.

Also, SQL Server Agent has to be running and the agent login account must have appropriate rights to the target.

There are other ways to do what you want, but this is by far the easiest.



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tao jiang at 2/22/01 11:33:20 AM



Hi. This is a simple question. I need to backup a database and keep the dump for three days, say I need backup.1, backup.2, and backup.3. How do you setup a NT job to do that? I wrote a UNIX shell script to handle this before, but I am new to NT.
thanks