Create Log Backup Maintenance Plan In SQL Server 2016

Mohamed El-Qassas (Mvp)
Sep 17, 2017

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In this article, I will explain how to take log backups frequently by creating a Log Backup Maintenance Plan in SQL Server 2016.

Consideration

Before you begin, you should be aware of the following,

To create and manage Maintenance Plans, it requires being a member of the sysadmin fixed server role.
To create a Backup Log, it requires being the sysadmin fixed server role and the db_owner and db_backupoperator fixed database roles.
As a mandatory prerequisite, you must have a full database backup before performing a Backup Log to avoid this error: BACKUP LOG cannot be performed because there is no current database backup.
Depending on the size of the databases and the amount of data transaction, you could end up needing quite a lot of disk space for the log backups.
Backup Log is working with Full or bulk-logged recovery models.
If the log has never been backed up, you must create two log backups to permit the Database Engine to truncate the log to the point of the last backup.

Note

Performing a log backup will free the space within the transaction log to be reused for new log records.
If the log backup is not taken, the transaction log will continue to grow that lead to,
- Filling up the Disk Drive rapidly.
- Getting (9002) error "The transaction log for database ‘SharePoint_Config’ is full due to ‘LOG_BACKUP

Steps

To keep the log from filling up, you should take log backups frequently by creating a Log backup maintenance plan as follows.

Connect to the SQL Server.

From Object Explorer > Management > Maintenance Plan Wizard.

The Maintenance Plan Wizard should be shown. Click Next.

Set the Maintenance Plan > click Change to set the schedule.

Set the Schedule setting as you prefer. Click OK, then Next.

In Maintenance Tasks > Select Backup database Transaction log > Next.

In Task Order, we only have one task, so click Next.

In General tab, click on the Database(s) drop-down list.

Select the desired database, or select all databases based on your requirement.

In Destination tab, Specify The folder that should contain the automatically created database files, Specify the backup file's extension. (The default is .trn)

On the Option tab, check "verify the backup integrity" to make sure the backup has been completed successfully and all volumes are readable.

Specify the report path > Check email report if you need to receive a report by email.
- You should configure email setting in SQL to can send the report by email.