SQL server database log file increasing enormously - sql

I have 5 SSIS jobs running in sql server job agent and some of them are pulling transactional data into our database over the interval of 4 hours frequently. The problem is log file of our database is growing rapidly which means in a day, it eats up 160GB of disk space. Since our requirement dont need In-point recovery, so I set the recovery model to SIMPLE, eventhough I set it to SIMPLE, the log data consumes more than 160GB in a day. Because of disk full, the scheduled jobs getting failed often.Temporarily I am doing DETACH approach to cleanup the log.
FYI: All the SSIS packages in the job is using Transaction on some tasks. for eg. Sequence Cointainer
I want a permanent solution to keep log file in a particular memory limit and as I said earlier I dont want my log data for future In-Point recovery, so no need to take log backup at all.
And one more problem is that in our database,the transactional table has 10 million records in it and some master tables have over 1000 records on them but our mdf file size is about 50 GB now.I dont believe that this 10 million records should make it to 50GB memory consumption.Whats the problem here?
Help me on these issues. Thanks in advance.

Related

Why will my SQL Transaction log file not auto-grow?

The Issue
I've been running a particularly large query, generating millions of records to be inserted into a table. Each time I run the query I get an error reporting that the transaction log file is full.
I've managed to get a test query to run with a reduced set of results and by using SELECT INTO instead of INSERT into as pre built table. This reduced set of results generated a 20 gb table, 838,978,560 rows.
When trying to INSERT into the pre built table I've also tried using it with and without a Cluster index. Both failed.
Server Settings
The server is running SQL Server 2005 (Full not Express).
The dbase being used is set to SIMPLE for recovery and there is space available (around 100 gb) on the drive that the file is sitting on.
The transaction log file setting is for File Growth of 250 mb and to a maximum of 2,097,152 mb.
The log file appears to grow as expected till it gets to 4729 mb.
When the issue first appeared the file grow to a lower value however i've reduced the size of other log files on the same server and this appears to allow this transaction log file grow further by the same amount as the reduction on the other files.
I've now run out of ideas of how to solve this. If anyone has any suggestion or insight into what to do it would be much appreciated.
First, you want to avoid auto-growth whenever possible; auto-growth events are HUGE performance killers. If you have 100GB available why not change the log file size to something like 20GB (just temporarily while you troubleshoot this). My policy has always been to use 90%+ of the disk space allocated for a specific MDF/NDF/LDF file. There's no reason not to.
If you are using SIMPLE recovery SQL Server is supposed manage the task of returning unused space but sometimes SQL Server does not do a great job. Before running your query check the available free log space. You can do this by:
right-click the DB > go to Tasks > Shrink > Files.
change the type to "Log"
This will help you understand how much unused space you have. You can set "Reorganize pages before releasing unused space > Shrink File" to 0. Moving forward you can also release unused space using CHECKPOINT; this may be something to include as a first step before your query runs.

SQL server 2008R2 The transaction log for database 'MGR' is full due to 'ACTIVE_TRANSACTION'

I run a query in which I wanted to update more then 130 mln of records. After few hours I got an error:
The transaction log for database 'MGR' is full due to 'ACTIVE_TRANSACTION'.
now I ve got 70 MB free on my C disk drive.
I supose that the problem was with to little disc space and thats why query failed but how can I now regain the lost disc space from before query ?
Im using sql server 2008 R2
Thanks for any hints
The problem has to do with how sql logs all the changes during an active transaction. While a transaction is active, the log cannot be flushed, so if you have a huge active transaction the log keeps growing until it reaches a point where it can exceed its capacity. The amount of logging depends on many factors: the recovery mode (full recovery mode is the one that generates more logging activity). Also, you can breakdown the transaction in small chunks to enable log flushing in between. Also look into table hint TABLOCK. The lost amount of disk must possibly have gone to the log file. Check that out.

Moving data from one table to another in Sql Server 2005

I am moving around 10 million data from one table to another in SQL Server 2005. The Purpose of Data transfer is to Offline the old data.
After some time it throws an error Description: "The LOG FILE FOR DATABASE 'tempdb' IS FULL.".
My tempdb and templog is placed in a drive (other than C drive) which has around 200 GB free. Also my tempdb size in database is set to 25 GB.
As per my understanding I will have to increase the size of tempdb from 25 GB to 50 GB and set the log file Auto growth portion to "unrestricted file growth (MB)".
Please let me know other factors and I cannot experiment much as I am working on Production database so can you please let me know if they changes will have some other impact.
Thanks in Advance.
You know the solution. Seems you are just moving part of data to make your queries faster.
I am agree with your solution
As per my understanding I will have to increase the size of tempdb from 25 GB to 50 GB and set the log file Auto growth portion to "unrestricted file growth (MB)".
Go ahead
My guess is that you're trying to move all of the data in a single batch; can you break it up into smaller batches, and commit fewer rows as you insert? Also, as noted in the comments, you may be able to set your destination database to SIMPLE or BULK-INSERT mode.
Why are you using Log file at all? Copy your data (Data and Logfile) then set the mode on SIMPLE and run the transfer again.

Database taking up way more space than tables combined

I have a database that's taking up nearly 7 gigs. If I look at the table usage, it should be much less than that, like 40 megs. There was a large log table that I deleted yesterday, but my database still says it's very large.
Here are the stats:
database_name database_size unallocated space
Umbraco_Indoorpower 6911.56 MB 859.59 MB
reserved data index_size unused
31144 KB 26272 KB 3240 KB 1632 KB
I ran this:
DBCC SHRINKDATABASE (umbraco_indoorpower, 99);
And that got my database down to 2.3 gigs. Still though, way too large.
database_name database_size unallocated space
Umbraco_Indoorpower 2302.44 MB 1.63 MB
reserved data index_size unused
30016 KB 26200 KB 3240 KB 576 KB
I'm guessing I'm not freeing up all the space from that log table that I deleted yesterday. I actual ran delete from tblLog. Maybe that was the wrong way to go about it.
Does anyone know how I can free up some more space?
How big is the log file? What is your recovery model? It's quite possible that the database_size number above is nearly 7 GB of log and very little data. Find the files on your hard drive - you can locate the paths using:
EXEC umbraco_indoorpower..sp_helpfile;
I am going to bet that the LDF is HUGE and the MDF is actually small. In which case you are probably in FULL recovery model and have never taken a log backup. If this is true then you can do this:
USE umbraco_indoorpower;
GO
BACKUP LOG umbraco_indoorpower TO DISK = 'C:\some_path\umbraco.trn';
GO
DBCC SHRINKFILE(umbraco_indoorpower_log, 20); -- guessing on target MB size here
(If you are in simple recovery model, the above will fail, but there will be some other explanation why the log file is large - e.g. a long-running or uncommitted transaction, did your delete commit?)
Then you will want to either (a) set up proper maintenance, including full/diff/log backups, which will help make optimal reuse of the log file, or (b) switch to simple recovery, in which case the log will manage itself.
In most cases simple recovery does not provide enough protection in the event of a disaster, but that is for you to decide.
In the meantime, you can shrink the file all you want, but if you keep your recovery model and transaction handling the way it is, you'll just be seeing your file grow again and you'll be back tomorrow running the shrink command. This is absolutely horrible for your files. This is why I object to answers like "Run a shrink operation." I talk about why here:
Oh, the horror! Please stop telling people they should shrink their log files!
http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2009/08/stop-shrinking-your-database-files-seriously-now/
In any case, you have data and log, and for the log to be shrunk, you would have to have made a backup.
Edit: Everything Aaron said
The existing answers are already pretty good. I have one additional solution: Script the database including data (the SSMS UI allows you to do this easily) and execute the script in a fresh database.
You maybe want to switch to simple log model, too (if you don't have a special need for using the full logging model). One thing is for sure: You can't run in full mode and not have proper transaction log management.
Another thing that can take up more space in SQL Server is Service Broker queues. In my case I have 6 million rows in queues taking up 17GB...

Reducing Size Of SQL Backup?

I am using SQL Express 2005 and do a backup of all DB's every night. I noticed one DB getting larger and larger. I looked at the DB and cannot see why its getting so big! I was wondering if its something to do with the log file?
Looking for tips on how to find out why its getting so big when its not got that much data in it - Also how to optimise / reduce the size?
Several things to check:
is your database in "Simple" recovery mode? If so, it'll produce a lot less transaction log entries, and the backup will be smaller. Recommended for development - but not for production
if it's in "FULL" recovery mode - do you do regular transaction log backups? That should limit the growth of the transaction log and thus reduce the overall backup size
have you run a DBCC SHRINKDATABASE(yourdatabasename) on it lately? That may help
do you have any log / logging tables in your database that are just filling up over time? Can you remove some of those entries?
You can find the database's recovery model by going to the Object Explorer, right click on your database, select "Properties", and then select the "Options" tab on the dialog:
Marc
If it is the backup that keeps growing and growing, I had the same problem. It is not a 'problem' of course, this is happening by design - you are just making a backup 'set' that will simply expand until all available space is taken.
To avoid this, you've got to change the overwrite options. In the SQL management studio, right-click your DB, TASKS - BACKUP, then in the window for the backup you'll see it defaults to the 'General' page. Change this to 'Options' and you'll get a different set of choices.
The default option at the top is 'Append to the existing media set'. This is what makes your backup increase in size indefinitely. Change this to 'Overwrite all existing backup sets' and the backup will always be only as big as one entire backup, the latest one.
(If you have a SQL script doing this, turn 'NOINIT' to 'INIT')
CAUTION: This means the backup will only be the latest changes - if you made a mistake three days ago but you only have last night's backup, you're stuffed. Only use this method if you have a backup regime that copies your .bak file daily to another location, so you can go back to any one of those files from previous days.
It sounds like you are running with the FULL recovery model and the Transaction Log is growing continuously as the result of no Transaction Log backups being taken.
In order to rectify this you need to:
Take a transaction log backup. (See: BACKUP(TRANSACT-SQL) )
Shrink the transaction log file down
to an appropriate size for your needs. (See:How to use DBCC SHRINKFILE.......)
Schedule regular transaction log
backups according to data recovery
requirements.
I suggest reading the following Microsoft reference in order to ensure that you are managing your database environment appropriately.
Recovery Models and Transaction Log Management
Further Reading: How to stop the transaction log of a SQL Server database from growing unexpectedly
One tip for keeping databases small would be at design time, use the smallest data type that you can use.
for Example you may have a status table, do you really need the index to be an int, when a smallint or tinyint will do?
Darknight
as you do a daily FULL backup for your Database , ofcourse it will get so big with time .
so you have to put a plan for your self . as this
1st day: FULL
/ 2nd day: DIFFERENTIAL
/ 3rd day: DIFFERENTIAL
/ 4th day: DIFFERENTIAL
/ 5th day: DIFFERENTIAL
and then start over .
and when you restore your database , if you want to restore the FULL you can do it easily , but when you need to restore the DIFF version , you backup the first FULL before it with " NO-recovery " then the DIFF you need , and then you will have your data back safely .
7zip your backup file for archiving. I recently backed up a database to a 178MB .bak file. After archiving it to a .7z file is was only 16MB.
http://www.7-zip.org/
If you need an archive tool that works with larger files sizes more efficiently and faster than 7zip does, I'd recommend taking a look at LZ4 archiving. I have used it for archiving file backups for years with no issues:
http://lz4.github.io/lz4/