LiteSpeed and ‘Differential backups’
Hello! As the new PM for LiteSpeed for SQL Server, I’m extremely happy to be here on this blog. While I catch up on all things backup and recovery for SQL Server, one thing has become clear. DBA’s don’t seem to like doing differential backups. From what I gather from numerous customer calls, it seems that the current process for establishing a backup process that includes diff’s and then ensuring these diff’s work according to the predefined schedule and escalation rules is a huge pain in the a**. Well, that’s actually great to hear, believe it or not. Why? Because our advanced compression technology for managing differentials fully automates the process of performing diff’s and enforces contingencies for the differential process so that both size and dates of diff’s have an impact on when the next full will take place. We’ll be providing much more around this advanced compression as we just released 5.1.1 and are hard at work on 5.2.
Thanks! Andy Grant
Tags: backup, differentials, litespeed, recovery
October 7th, 2009 at 12:52 AM
Is there a way I can execute Pre and Post Litespeed job commands.
I need to develop a script that instructs my EVA storage to take a snapshot and present it to my Backup server, so I can stream the Litespeed backup file it to tape.
tks
Gordon
October 8th, 2009 at 10:10 AM
Sure, how are you doing the backups – via T-SQL script, via maintenance plans (native vs LiteSpeed), or another way? And which version of SQL Server are you using?
October 9th, 2009 at 2:58 AM
Hi Brent
My SQL version is 2005
I am a SQL & Litespeed novice, I’m more on the Storage side of things.
I have configured a scheduled job within Litespeed to backup my DB to a LUN presented from my EVA storage.
This job is scheduled to overwrite the media when it executes.
When the Litespeed job finishes, I want to fire off a command to my EVA, which will take a snapshot of the LUN containg the Litespeed backup file, and present it to my Backup server, (which runs CA’s Arcserve) and then kick off the Arcserve backup job. When the Arcserve job completes successfully, a post job command will unmount the snapshot LUN, and instruct the EVA to delete the snapshot, to complete the cycle.
If I need to backup the whole SQL instance(as opposed to a single DB), is there a method within Litespeed for that or do I need separate jobs.
Gordon
October 14th, 2009 at 6:36 AM
Gordon – ah, gotcha, yeah, if you’re going to back up the entire SQL instance, you won’t use LiteSpeed. You’ll need to use T-SQL scripting to call xp_cmdshell to pass a DOS command to the EVA.