SQL Slayer » Backups

Work-around for 2005 Maintenance Plan bug

mlakarj — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:47:28 +0000

In working with SQL 2005 Maintenance Plan backup cleanup tasks, a frustrating bug was found. It seems that when the ability to select “hours” as a time criterion was added in SP2, the door was opened for misinterpretation of time units. For example, you can, in your local Management Studio, set the Plan to delete files greater that 4 days old, and when run on the server the Plan will delete files only greater than 4 WEEKS old. This was the full mapping I found:

SET                  ACTUAL
Hours   ->         Days
Days    ->         Weeks
Weeks ->         Months
Months ->         Years
Years    ->         Years

I don’t know yet if this is fixed in 2008. For 2005 at least, I suggest refraining from using the built-in “Maintenance Cleanup Tasks” in Maintenance Plans, and instead use a T-SQL Statement task with the snippet below. This will truly delete greater than 4 days. Set your time criteria however you like.



DECLARE @DateOlderThan datetime

SET @DateOlderThan = DATEADD(day,-4,GETDATE())
EXEC master.dbo.xp_delete_file

 0 -- delete files

,N'H:\SQLBackup\INST3' --full path to the main directory

,N'bak'-- file extension

,@DateOlderThan-- delete files created before this timestamp

,1-- Including first-level sub

Unable to restore backup from 2008 R2 to 2008

Adam Bean — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 21:02:55 +0000

Locally I am running 2008 R2 and on my DBA management server I run 2008 RTM. Today I went to restore a database from my local to my server and received the following awesome error:

The database was backed up on a server running version 10.50.1092. That version is incompatible with this server, which is running version 10.00.1600. Either restore the database on a server that supports the backup, or use a backup that is compatible with this server.

My initial thoughts were that (hopefully), it was simply that I was running ‘08 RTM (was only running on RTM to support a small side project that has somewhat died). So I figured it was time to install SP1. Installed and tried again …

The database was backed up on a server running version 10.50.1092. That version is incompatible with this server, which is running version 10.00.2531. Either restore the database on a server that supports the backup, or use a backup that is compatible with this server.

Awesome.

Granted, it’s the same scenario when going to a newer version with 2005/2008 from a previous version, but from R1 to R2 there is no compatibility (at least of today anyways). This is unfortunate to hear to say the least. It makes me wonder what else will not be supported.