Efficient SQL Backup?

[Vishal]

Hi all,

I am having issues of efficiency of backing up data from one SQL data
base to another.

The two servers in questions are on different networks , behind
different firewalls. We have MS SQL 2000.

On the source data i run a job with the following steps:

1> take trans backup every 4 hrs
2> ftp to the remote server
3> if ftp fails , disable the whole job

On the target server I run a job which does the following

1> restore the trans backup with NORECOVERY.

If the job fails at target. I will have to go through the whole process
of doing a complete backup of the source , restoring it at the other
ens and then starting trans-backup again.

Also, if we do a failover to the target server, then when we roll back
to the source server again we have to da a back-up of the target and
restore it on the source server.

Is ther a more efficent way of doing this??

[Erland Sommarskog]

Re: Efficient SQL Backup?

Vishal (bajaj.vishal@g mail.com) writes:[color=blue]
> I am having issues of efficiency of backing up data from one SQL data
> base to another.
>
> The two servers in questions are on different networks , behind
> different firewalls. We have MS SQL 2000.
>
> On the source data i run a job with the following steps:
>
> 1> take trans backup every 4 hrs
> 2> ftp to the remote server
> 3> if ftp fails , disable the whole job
>
> On the target server I run a job which does the following
>
> 1> restore the trans backup with NORECOVERY.
>
> If the job fails at target. I will have to go through the whole process
> of doing a complete backup of the source , restoring it at the other
> ens and then starting trans-backup again.
>
> Also, if we do a failover to the target server, then when we roll back
> to the source server again we have to da a back-up of the target and
> restore it on the source server.
>
> Is ther a more efficent way of doing this??[/color]

I'm not sure exactly the purpose of this home-made log shipping is,
but could replication be a better alternative?

(Although, I have no idea whether replication can cross your network
and firewalls.)


--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, esquel@sommarsk og.se

Books Online for SQL Server 2005 at

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/downloads/books.mspx

Books Online for SQL Server 2000 at

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinfo/previousversions/books.mspx

[Ajay Rengunthwar]

Re: Efficient SQL Backup?

As per my understanding you are concerned with

3> if ftp fails , disable the whole job

* If you want to save time then you can go ahead and use SQL Litespeed
tool.

You can go through this article for more information.

http://www.sql-server-performance.com/sql_litespeed_spotlight.asp

Thanks
Ajay Rengunthwar (Ajay)

[Vishal]

Re: Efficient SQL Backup?

thnks a lot, but will i be able to do a failover easily ? and can i do
transactional backups and keep restoring it at the other end. I cannot
do a complete backup due to bandwidth constraints.