After reading Pinal Dave's useful article on restoring databases I am planning to utilise the following setup...
- My 400mb database is in D:\databases\
- Recovery model is Full
- Create a backup device in C:\dbbackups
- Every day a Full backup will be run on the database to the backup file on C:
- Every 4 hours a transactional log backup will be run on the database to the backup file on C:
- Every 24 hours the server host takes a differential file backup of C: & D: which I expect will copy the SQL database and backup device files in their entirety
- Every 24 hours the server host takes a SQL backup of the database files
- Every week I download the backup device file to our office off-site
I know I could probably improve on that (pointers welcome!) but cost is always the factor, so I'm trying to limit risk as much as I can. In addition to the above pointers...
- Taking into account steps 1-5 above, does that mean that the backup file will simply grow and grow forever as the new backups are performed?
- Am I correct in thinking that I only need one Full backup plus the following log backups in order to restore to the latest 4 hour backup taken?
- If so, is it possible to have the backups overwritten on say a three week retention period? If not, how do other DBA's limit these file sizes?
Desperately trying to avoid becoming the next disaster story... :-)