Tame Your Log Files!
By default, the recovery model for database backups on Microsoft‘s SQL Server is set to “full”. This could cause issues for the uninitiated. If backups aren’t fully understood and managed correctly it could cause log files to bloat in size and get out of control. With the “full” recovery model, you get the advantage of flexibility in point-in-time restores and high-availability scenarios, but this also means having to run separate backups for log files in addition to the data files.
To keep things simple, we’ll look at the “simple” recovery model. When you run backups, you’re only dealing with data backups whether it’s a full or differential backup. The log file, which holds transactions between full backups, won’t be something you need to concern yourself with unless you’re doing advanced disaster recovery, like database mirroring, log shipping, or high-availability setups.
When dealing with a “full” recovery model, you’re not only in charge of backing up the data files, but the log files as well. In a healthy server configuration, log files are much smaller than data files. This means you can run log backups every 15 minutes or every hour without much IO activity as a full or differential backup. This is where you get the point-in-time flexibility. This is also where I often see a lot of issues…
Log files run astray. A new database might be created or migrated, and the default recovery model is still in “full” recovery mode. A server that relies on a simpler setup might not catch this nor have log backups in place. This means the log file will start growing exponentially, towering over the data file size, and creating hordes of VLFs (look out for a future post about these). I’ve seen a lot of administrators not know how to control this and resort to shrinking databases or files – which is just something you should never do unless your intentions are data corruption and breaking things.
My advice here is keep it simple. If you understand how to restore a full backup, differential backups, and log backups including which order they should be restored in and when to use “norecovery” flags, or have third-party software doing this for you, you’re all set. If you don’t, I would suggest setting up log backups to run at regular and short interval (15 mins – 1 hour) as a precaution and changing the database recovery models to “simple”. This can keep you protected when accidentally pulling in a database that defaulted to the “full” recovery model and having its log file eat the entire disk.
Pro Tip: Changing your “model” database’s recovery model will determine the default recovery model used for all new databases you create.
Any questions, comments, or feedback are appreciated! Leave a comment or send me an email to aturika@newtheme.jlizardo.com for any SQL Server questions you might have!
