When is the appropriate time to fire t-logs backup?

  • Hi,

    Is it alright to run t-logs backup while complete or differential backup is still running in the background?

    Objective is zero data loss and faster recovery time, which of the schedule is appropriate?

    1. full backup (weekly), then t-logs afterwards (round the clock, every 15 minutes), diff (daily)

    2. full backup then differential then t-logs (round the clock,every 15 minutes)

    3. full backup at the same time running the t-logs continuously, also while running diff backup (is this possible?)


    Kindest Regards,

    SQL 2000 (Clustered)/SQL 2005

  • I usually do and haven't encountered any hiccups. For my backups, I have a full backup kick off every night, differentials every six hours, and log backups every hour. Eventually, every 6 hours and once every day, the log backups fire at the same time as a differential or full backup.

  • Thanks Brett.


    Kindest Regards,

    SQL 2000 (Clustered)/SQL 2005

  • In my experience (not with just SQL Server), untested backups are worthless as much as 80% of the time.  And testing a backup with a restore or recovery needs more than casual analysis to confirm it worked as expected.

    It seems to me that a log backup of a database done at the same time a transaction log is being created has the ability to contain transactions that are not complete.  Most of our full backups are scheduled for midnight with transaction logs scheduled for hourly.  There are no backups of transaction logs done at the midnight backup, so that is handled by the maintenance plan.  The first transaction log backup is done at 1 AM.  On databases that take a long time to backup (i.e., longer than an hour, which would overlap a transaction log backup) there are no logs created as long as the full backup and log creation are done from the same maintenance plan.

    I have to guess that the only reason you haven't encountered any problem is because MS is protecting you, and you haven't looked to see if there is a problem.

    Thank-you,
    David Russell
    Any Cloud, Any Database, Oracle since 1982

  • You can't backup the database and tlogs at the same time. Your T-log backup will fail.  It's pointless to try anyway, because your full backup is backing up everything.  Run your t-log backup 15 minutes after the full finishes.

  • "You can't backup the database and tlogs at the same time. Your T-log backup will fail."

    T-log backup will not fail - it will just wait till the full database backup is complete and then it will run the T-log backup.

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