logshipping without initial backup

vad2319

Hello,

Would it be possible to setup log shipping without performing the initial backup?

The reason being our DR server is at a remote location & the upload\download bandwidth is 1.5 MB. hence it takes around 15 hours to just copy the initial seed backup(5 GB compressed) at the remote location.

Please advise if we can setup transactional logshipping via SQLBackup for an existing database on the destination remote sql server.

Many thanks!

petey

It is not possible using the SQL Backup 5 GUI. However, it is possible using the SQL Backup 4 GUI, if you have it. However, the SQL Backup 4 GUI does not support the newer options introduced in SQL Backup 5.

IMO, the easiest way to work around this is to first create a dummy database on the production server. Set up log shipping for that database using the options you would use for the actual database. Once everything is set up and working, open the SQL Server Agent backup job on the production server, open the T-SQL job step, and change the database name to the actual database you want to backup.

Likewise, on the standby server, open the SQL Server Agent restore job, open the T-SQL restore job step, and change the database name to the actual standby database name.

This assumes you already have the standby database in recovery mode. If not, you would need to first perform a full database backup on the production server, and restore it in recovery mode on the standby server, by whatever means.

See http://www.yohz.com/logship.html on how SQL Backup performs log shipping.

vad2319

Thanks Peter!