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comments and suggestions
grambowk
Posts: 8
Just thought I'd add a couple of comments and suggestions for possible future releases.
1. With the "Backup Size" and "Backup Duration Charts" would it be possible to add an "Hour of Day" x-axis to the charts as you already have done for the "Average Backup Size" charts?
2. With respect to these charts it would be useful if you could add colour-coded lines to represent the different types of backups. For example, keep the current orange colour for full backups and use blue for log backups (and some other colour for diff backups). This would just make it that little bit easier to quickly spot the different types of backups.
3. It would be great if you could include a chart that showed the backup
sizes over time. For example, take the largest backup of each day and add that to a chart that will then show how the size of the backup (and indirectly, the size of the database) varies over time. This would be useful for trend analysis and identifying when more hard disk space or greater compression needs to be applied.
Not sure how possible it is to do 3 because you'd need to worry about retaining this information somewhere but it's a wish list so I included it here.
Thanks,
Karl
1. With the "Backup Size" and "Backup Duration Charts" would it be possible to add an "Hour of Day" x-axis to the charts as you already have done for the "Average Backup Size" charts?
2. With respect to these charts it would be useful if you could add colour-coded lines to represent the different types of backups. For example, keep the current orange colour for full backups and use blue for log backups (and some other colour for diff backups). This would just make it that little bit easier to quickly spot the different types of backups.
3. It would be great if you could include a chart that showed the backup
sizes over time. For example, take the largest backup of each day and add that to a chart that will then show how the size of the backup (and indirectly, the size of the database) varies over time. This would be useful for trend analysis and identifying when more hard disk space or greater compression needs to be applied.
Not sure how possible it is to do 3 because you'd need to worry about retaining this information somewhere but it's a wish list so I included it here.
Thanks,
Karl
Comments
Re 1:
It would be possible to display an x-axis for the mentioned charts, at least for the 24-hour period. For the 7-day period, the x-axis would be overly cramped. The aim of these charts (without the x-axis) was to give a quick idea of where the size/duration trend was heading. The plan was to be able to expand on these charts, so that a larger chart, with more details, could be displayed, together with the underlying data.
Re 2:
The charts only ever show data for transaction log backups. There should not be any data for other types of backups shown.
Re 3:
This would require data for full backups to be retrieved and stored. LSM only retrieve details of the last full database backup.
Perhaps we could consider implementing some of your suggestions in SQL Backup, as it collects a lot more historical backup data.
SQL Backup Consultant Developer
Associate, Yohz Software
Beyond compression - SQL Backup goodies under the hood, updated for version 8
Re 1: That sounds great. The 7-day period chart is fine as it stands. And the plan to expand on the charts and drill down into further details sounds great too.
Re 2: My mistake, I was looking at the previous 24 hour chart and there was an exceedingly large log backup file, which I had assumed was a full backup file. The charts prove there worth instantly. I'll have to investigate that.
Re 3: If that could be possibly implemented in SQL Backup that would be nice.
Regards,
Karl
2. An option to display the backup sizes in something other that bytes (user selectable) would be useful, I have logs over night that display as 9308685824, which is hard to equate by eye to 8.7 Gb
When I closed down last night while the app was minimised to the tray, it (the app) crashed! :?
HTH
Dave
Re 1:
You need to link a SQL Server agent job and job step to the standby server. This is because SQL Server does not store the duration of restores in the backup history tables. Hence the information needs to come from the SQL Server Agent job step.
We'll try to fit in this information so that users are aware of this.
Re 2:
Yes, it is not user friendly to display everything in bytes. LSM will display both bytes and a user friendly size (rounded to nearest Kb, MB, GB) in a future version.
Re the crash:
Do you have a stack trace when the crash occurred?
Thanks.
SQL Backup Consultant Developer
Associate, Yohz Software
Beyond compression - SQL Backup goodies under the hood, updated for version 8
That would be nice.
If possible, could you fix this:
When creating a new group and are on the standby databases tab, the server and database fields are automatically enabled. You can enter values in them (and the DB combo actually populates), and hit save. But the standby server is not saved (because you didn't press ADD first). It makes the process a little deceiving at first.
1.
I'm having problems with this as well. I'm not quite following your suggestion. Our setup does not include a monitoring server.
Per the documentation on the wiki, I'm supposed to select a job for the standby database so that the restore duration data can be filled in. When I select the ... button, I can see the jobs on the server, but I am unable to select any (or is the job field ever enabled)?
The backup duration is displayed properly.
2. I cannot get the freespace alerts to work on either server. I purposely specified 1 gig so that both would immediately get triggered. The commands were accepted and saved correctly, but they don't appear to work - meaning no alerts are triggered?
3. Since I'm at it......... I'll add something else for future enhancements.
When your adding alerts, it would be nice to not keep up with all the keywords. Granted, they aren't hard or anything, but it would be nice to eliminate the need to know them (esp. if more are added in future updates). So I propose, you add functionality that would add the alerts for the user when he/she right clicks in the alerts area or clicks an Add/Delete button.
In the case if you right click, you would have a menu such as:
Free space
Last backup
Last restore, etc (format how you want).
So, the user right clicks and selects free space - the app should bring up a small dialog with a text box for the drive letter and a text box for the size.
Press ok or enter button and the command properly formatted is added for the user.
Pressing a different menu option would show different options required for setting up that alert. Pressing ok/enter - automatically puts the alert in the alerts box formatted correctly.
4. One more thing.................honest.....
Would it be possible to get data on the copy job? As duration, success/failures? I'm assuming you could use the log_shipping_monitor_history_detail table for this info?
Not sure if there's room on the summary page for it, or maybe add something (another tab, button) for viewing extended data.
5. Petty change request: Add an X to close the groups tab. Add a view menu or File menu option to view the tab again. In our case, we only have 1 group for log shipping. It would be nice to get the extra screen space. You guys did a nice job of the UI on the right side, so it's still easy to navigate the servers without need the tree view on the left (in this type of setup).
If you have time and if its "doable", it be a nice touch.
When I closed down last night while the app was minimised to the tray, it (the app) crashed! Confused