Questions about Log Shipping -

randyj

I am already using SQL Backup to backup my DBs and Logs to a share. My question is whether there is any way to get SQL Backup to use my existing log backup jobs to provide log shipping, or do I need to set up the log backup jobs all over again using the log shipping wizard ?

If I use the wizard, is there any difference in the logs ? Are they usable for doing 'standard' DB recovery ?
Thanks !

petey

If your jobs were created using the SQL Server log shipping wizard, then it's not possible to convert them to use SQL Backup.

If your jobs were created manually using standard BACKUP and RESTORE commands, then you may be able to convert them to use SQL Backup, taking into account the following:

- on the primary and standby servers, you need to perform the backup/restore using the SQL Backup extended stored procedure

- on the standby server(s), I'm assuming you already have a way to identify the files which need to be restored, in which case you do no need to perform any additional changes.

SQL Backup's RESTORE syntax supports restores from multiple trx log backups e.g.

EXEC master..sqlbackup '-sql "RESTORE LOGS [pubs] FROM DISK = [e:\backups\ls\pubs*.sqb] WITH MOVETO = [e:\backups\ls\processed] " '

The MOVETO is required to move the processed logs to another folder, to prevent them from being restored repeatedly.

If you want to restore the transaction log backups using SQL Server, you would need to convert them to regular SQL Server MTF files first, either using the CONVERT syntax or the sqb2mtf utility.