Log Shipping Restores Across Network?

MattSMattS Posts: 25
edited January 18, 2012 10:15AM in SQL Backup Previous Versions
Hi,

We have been using SQL Backup on one of our servers for some time and are very happy with it. I am now using a trial version to test Log Shipping and so far the results look good.

However, I do have one question regarding the backup locations. As far as I can tell, the process is as follows:
    1. Transaction log backed up locally on source server 2. Backup copied to specified network share 3. Transaction log restored on the destination server (across the network) 4. Backup file moved to processed folder
Doing backups/restores across the network is generally considered a bad thing, so I would expect to be able to copy the backup file locally to the source server before doing the restore? Have I missed a setting somewhere?

Thanks in advance for your help.
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Comments

  • James BJames B Posts: 1,124 Silver 4
    Hi, thanks for your post.

    Your methodology is sound - the important part is step 2 - the network share you copy to should be on the target machine (the one you want to restore to). This way, you eliminate both the backup and the restore from happening across the network:

    - Backup locally
    - Copy to network share on target
    - Restore locally

    The network copy in SQL Backup is fault tolerant so it can perform retries to recover from outages etc. If the restore fails due to a file missing, it'll still attempt the restore at each future interval until such a point all files have been copied, so to that extent it can recover from intermittent network outages quite well.

    Hope that helps!
    Systems Software Engineer

    Redgate Software

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  • MattSMattS Posts: 25
    Hi James,

    Thanks for your reply and for the clarification.

    In this instance the target machine is an offsite warm standby for DR purposes, and we need the log backups available on our network for other purposes such as refreshing dev and test environments.

    We could configure the processed folder to be the network share, so that we copy from the source to the target and then from the target to the network share, but that would create two way traffic between us and our DR site which we would prefer not to do.

    As a workaround I have created a simple SQL job on the target machine which copies the backup files across from the network share, with the SQL Backup restore then being done locally.

    Thanks again.
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  • James BJames B Posts: 1,124 Silver 4
    Ah, yes - if you need the files in a local area on the backup server too, then your workaround sounds like the right way to tackle it.

    Let us know if you run into anything else!
    Systems Software Engineer

    Redgate Software

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