Perform Maintenance with SQL Server Databases in Full Recovery mode

By: Jeremy Kadlec | Updated: 2006-12-12 | Comments (4) | Related: > Maintenance

Problem

When I have performed database maintenance in the past the transaction log backups were huge and I was unable to restore the transaction logs. This caused more problems for me so I have stopped performing SQL Server maintenance. My SQL Server performance is now an issue, so I am looking for a process to be able to perform database maintenance for my databases in full recovery mode during a pre-defined maintenance window.

Solution

Performing regularly scheduled maintenance is critical for high performance and ensuring the users will have a positive experience with your applications. The challenge with performing database maintenance for databases in full recovery mode is the excessively large transaction log backups as compared to databases in simple recovery mode. The excessive size is due to the full recovery mode retaining all of the before and after records. With a great deal of maintenance the probable cause for not being able to restore the transaction logs is an incorrect pointer reference.

The process below to perform database maintenance during a pre-defined maintenance window should be tested in a development environment for databases in full recovery mode prior to executing in production:

Next Steps

Assess your databases to determine if the transaction log backup.
If you have been hesitant to perform database maintenance for databases in full recovery mode, consider the approach listed above in a development environment.
If the development process works as expected, test the process in your QA environment and then push the code out to production environment.
If the backup time and disk space is causing issues for you, consider the backup and recovery tools for SQL Server that can compress the backups to save 50% or more of the disk space and 50% or more of the backup time needed.
For additional MSSQLTips.com tips on performing database maintenance, reference these tips:

About the author

Jeremy Kadlec is a Co-Founder, Editor and Author at MSSQLTips.com with more than 300 contributions. He is also the CTO @ Edgewood Solutions and a six-time SQL Server MVP. Jeremy brings 20+ years of SQL Server DBA and Developer experience to the community after earning a bachelor's degree from SSU and master's from UMBC.

This author pledges the content of this article is based on professional experience and not AI generated.

View all my tips

Article Last Updated: 2006-12-12

Comments For This Article

Thursday, July 5, 2012 - 9:55:07 AM - Jeremy Kadlec

Sreeni,

I would add a top clause to the logic you use and only rebuild\reorganize a hand full of tables per day so you do not break log shipping, replication, database mirroring, etc. I would start off with 5 tables\indexes and see the impact. Then scale it up to 10 or 15 tables and reassess.

Hopefully you will find a magic number to maintain your indexes.

The recommendation in this tip is for a different scenario, so sorry if this caused any confusion.

HTH.

Thank you,
Jeremy Kadlec

Wednesday, July 4, 2012 - 6:01:46 PM - Sreeni

Jeremy,

I am running index reorg and index rebuild maintenance based on the fragmentation level (<30 reorg and > 30 rebuild). We are on WIndows 2008 R2 Ent and SQL 2008 R2 Ent. The database is Trans Replicated Mirrored and Log Shipped. I dont have any option except to go for full recovery model.

When maintenance run it generates huge log which breaks LS and huge latency on replication and Mirroring.

Appreciate any comments.

Thanks,
Sreeni

Tuesday, July 3, 2012 - 6:05:19 PM - Jeremy Kadlec

Sreeni,

Exactly what SQL Server database maintenance are you running? What error message(s) are you getting? What version of SQL Server and Windows are you running?

Kindly let me know and I may be able to offer a few suggestions.

Thank you,
Jeremy Kadlec

Tuesday, July 3, 2012 - 1:52:45 PM - Sreeni

Jeremy,

My Database is in Full recovery mode and is around 500 GB size. I am not able to perform maintenance on it as its Mirrored, Logshipped and replicated. All breaks if I perform any maintenance on anything.

Appreciate your reply.

Thanks,
Sreeni