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SQL Attachability & Snapshots

Hi All,

A two-parter on a 2008r2 server running an instance of SQL that we are backing up.

1) I think I generally understand the attachability check concept but we do not have a full install to test it against not can I really justify purchasing one for the task. The software that uses it on the server in question was a bundled package for document management. It may or may not work to check itself but so far I haven't tried it. How important is this step? All the backup flag as yellow (unchecked). How often does it really need to be done? If it is critical what do you do if it fails?

2) This same server seems to snapshot every night after roll-up time regardless of the schedule I set it at. This is the only server in the lot that does this but it is the only one that has SQL on it. Is this triggered somehow by the roll-up or is it by default or what? It seems like this behavior is not by design.

Thanks.

Parents
  • 1) Attachability check is simply an after backup check of the SQL data in the recovery point. It runs as a nightly job and checks one recovery point per day. Since each incremental relies on the previous chain, if the check works on one recovery point then all recovery points prior should be ok as well. It is not necessary to run the check. You could simply test your backups on a schedule of some sort to validate them that way. This is an additional feature to simplify backup checks.

    Personally I recommend turning on attachability checks and have it use the agents SQL instance. That saves time, money, and reduces the potential for version mismatch issues and errors.

    2) If you have SQL log truncation enabled it will trigger a backup during the nightly jobs. That's how SQL logs are truncated. We call a full VSS shadow copy backup and take an incremental backup. When that completes, VSS marks SQL as having a full backup and then SQL can truncate it's logs up to that point. If you disable SQL log truncation like scashman said, it will stop taking that backup but you need to have another method for truncating logs.
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  • 1) Attachability check is simply an after backup check of the SQL data in the recovery point. It runs as a nightly job and checks one recovery point per day. Since each incremental relies on the previous chain, if the check works on one recovery point then all recovery points prior should be ok as well. It is not necessary to run the check. You could simply test your backups on a schedule of some sort to validate them that way. This is an additional feature to simplify backup checks.

    Personally I recommend turning on attachability checks and have it use the agents SQL instance. That saves time, money, and reduces the potential for version mismatch issues and errors.

    2) If you have SQL log truncation enabled it will trigger a backup during the nightly jobs. That's how SQL logs are truncated. We call a full VSS shadow copy backup and take an incremental backup. When that completes, VSS marks SQL as having a full backup and then SQL can truncate it's logs up to that point. If you disable SQL log truncation like scashman said, it will stop taking that backup but you need to have another method for truncating logs.
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