Incremental Backups Equivalent?

petec

I am new to RedGate Tools. We have a set of massive Databases going live soon. I wanted to do a Monthly Full Backup and Daily Incremental Backups - but there is no incremental option. Can't afford spacewise to have daily Differential Backups. What would you suggest, help please!
PeteC.

Jason Cook

Hi there,
The types of backup available in SQL Backup is the same as those available in SQL Server... so when considering incremental backups, you have two main choices:

The differential backup, which records all changes since the last full backup. This means that you do not need to keep the older differential backups if you are happy with the latest one (although you do still need the corresponding full backup file).
-- The advantage is that you only need that one file in addition to the full backup;
-- The disadvantage is that this file will grow over time (and hence take longer to back up).

The transaction log backup, which records all changes since the previous transaction log backup.
-- The advantage of this is that the files created will usually be a lot smaller than a differential or full backup (resulting in much quicker backups)
-- The disadvantage is that you require *all* transaction log backups (referred to as a "log chain") since the last full backup, if any are missing then you will be unable to restore the later transaction log backups.

Hope that helps,
Jason

petec

Dear Jason,
Thanks a million for that. Much appreciated.
PeteC.