Mark,
Q1. Restricted vs Unrestricted. If you can size your DB and know that
you wont exceed your space requirements then Unrestricted is OK. I
personally don't do this. I estimate my space usage over time and have
audit reports that are scheduled to run on a weekly basis that keeps me
informed of space usage and allows me to size accordingly. For me this
is critical as I manage multiple GB sized db's on the same server and
cant afford to have one database bring down my whole server.
Q2. We are using a SQL Server log shipping. This allows us to have a
warm standby in case of emergencies. From the standby server we do
incremental backups to a SAN then zip and backup to tape. Process has
been in place for a while and is pretty efficient. We have only had to
use it in a true emergency situation one time. Let me know if you need
further details. Log shipping ships with the enterprise version of SQL
2000 or you can roll your own. That's what we did.
Patrick Gallucci
MCT, MCDBA, MCSE, CCIE
www.patrickgallucci.com
214-642-0524
[Email Address Removed]
-----Original Message-----
From: Gresgott, Mark [mailto:[Email Address Removed]
Sent: Monday, December 02, 2002 3:24 PM
To: LazyDBA.com Discussion
Subject: Automatic file growth
Question #1: I am looking for some opinions on using Restricted or
Unrestricted file growth for SQL Data and Log files. Please respond
with Pros and Cons of each. Is there a "Best Practice" or standard for
automatically growing files.
Question #2: Does anyone backup Log files to another server or do you
just keep them on the same server(assuming no local tape drive). I
manage a very large Informix database in addition to some smaller SQL
server Databases. The Informix database is setup to backup logs to tape
every hour (or when the disk log is full). However, our firm does not
do this with any of its SQL servers. They backup DBs and Logs to the
local HD and then use Backup Exec to capture the entire server nightly.
If there was a major disk failure on one of the SQL servers, they may
not be able to restore from the logs (on the local HD) and the Backup
Exec backup would only be valid from the time of the backup. What are
other firms doing?
Thanks.
Mark
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