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At First: Sorry for my bad English.

Hello,

lets assume, every day on 8pm we create a full backup with wbadmin including truncation of the logfiles. What is the best practice for copying the log files to a network share in order to avoid loss of data until the next backup?

I do not understand why I cannot find matching information regarding this problem

thanks in advance

Daniel4711
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2 Answers2

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The Backup plan is entirely dependent on what type of environment your are running. Lets assume it's a MS SQL server, since it's Server2008 and Exchange 2010 in the tags. Info on choosing a strategy: Back Up and Restore of SQL Server Databases

Info on Transactionlogs backups: Transaction Log Backups

A typical set-up would be a Full Backup, as is now, at 8PM and schedule Transactionlogs backups during the day, depending on if RPO or RTO is more important. Info on RPO/RTO: wikibon.org/wiki/v/Defining_RPO_and_RTO

Keep in mind that when u do transactionlogs and only a full backup in the morning, when the data needs to be restored, you need to start with the full backup and then restore each transactionlog backup, since the transactionlog backup only contains the changes since the last backup. The RTO will be high.

If downtime is an issue, take full backups more often and keep doing transactionlog backups in between. If the database isn't too big so that backups take to long
Again, it's totally dependent on the type of environment you are running and what is agreed upon in SLA's if any.

Ignotus
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  • He said "Exchange 2010" in the tags... why is your answer about SQL Server backups?!? – Massimo Apr 30 '15 at 09:59
  • Thank you for your comment regarding RPO and RTO. SQL Server has a integrated feature for backup of transaction logs. This is missing in Exchange – Daniel4711 Apr 30 '15 at 10:15
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There is no standard practice for manually copying around Exchange transaction logs because nobody should be doing this; if you need them for point-in-time recovery after a full backup, the correct thing to do is to perform an incremental backup, which will include all transaction logs since the last backup.

Massimo
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  • We are only using the windows-image-backup Software for Backing Up. Incremental Backups are not possible with wbadmin. To avoid the loss of data between the fullbackups, i have to save the Transaction logs.. but how. – Daniel4711 Apr 30 '15 at 10:13
  • You can't, at least in any supported way. Transaction logs are just not designed to be manually moved around. – Massimo Apr 30 '15 at 10:49
  • Why was it not implemented? The operation is the SQL Server so similar. Ok, so I need either an additional Exchange Server or I have to make sure that the log storage is very reliable! Right? – Daniel4711 Apr 30 '15 at 11:03
  • Exchange backups are performed via VSS, which makes sure they are properly commited to disk and there's no I/O going on when they are backed up; if you copy them manually, you would find locked files or, worse, partually uncommitted ones. At the very least, you would need to dismount a database before copying its logs. And manual handling of them would still be difficult and error prone. I strongly advise against such a kludge. – Massimo Apr 30 '15 at 11:11
  • Re: reliability: a second server with a database replica would of course be the ideal solution; regardless of that, you should *of course* make sure your storage is reliable: RAID is not a substitute for backups, but backups are not a substitute for reliable storage. – Massimo Apr 30 '15 at 11:12
  • don´t get me wrong, of course we do backups and use Raid, but what happens when the server and the transaction logs are gone 23 hours after the full backup, and I only have the full backup. The risk is low, but present. Thank you for your contributions! – Daniel4711 Apr 30 '15 at 11:45
  • That's exactly what incremental backups are for; but they have to be done by an Exchange-aware backup software, not by manually copying files around. – Massimo Apr 30 '15 at 12:03