I am trying to setup live backup on the SQL Anywhere 9.0.2.3593. Main
database is located on a different server than the server that executes
dbbackup command. The syntax is as follows:

dbbackup -l g:\dbbackup\mydb.log -c "DSN=mydb"

When I execute the command above, I get output of dbbackup /? specifying all
available switches.

I also tried:

dbbackup -l g:\dbbackup\mydb.log -c
"CommLinks=tcpip(Host=10.10.10.10;Port=2638);eng=S erver1;dbn=mydb;uid=dba;pwd=sql"

Same result as the command with DSN.

When I ping the main server using:

dbping -d -c "DSN=mydb"
or
dbping -d -c
"CommLinks=tcpip(Host=10.10.10.10;Port=2638);eng=S erver1;dbn=mydb;uid=dba;pwd=sql"

I get "Ping database successful"

Why is the dbbackup -l not working then?

The command should be

dbbackup -l
"CommLinks=tcpip(Host=10.10.10.10;Port=2638);eng=S erver1;dbn=mydb;uid=dba;pwd=sql"
<TARGET_DIR/>

you don't need to map a drive to, or name, the
transaction log since it is the database server that
is sending the live transaction log and feeding dbbackup
the last few pages as they get added.

But this command is not a valid backup strategy alone,
if that is what your are thinking. The live backup
operation is meant to be combined with the periodic
use of `dbbackup -t -r -n -c .... <target/> ` to do
a proper backup of the transaction log. The live
log operation runs continuously to get the rest of
the transaction log activity *since* the last backup
of the transaction log.

Of course transaction log backups also need to be
combined with period full database backups for
a complete set of backup files.


P.S. 9.0.2 will be reaching the end of it's engineering support
life at the end of this month. You may want to review this
doc link below and consider you support options going forward
http://www.sybase.com/detail?id=1061840

"Drabina" <mpromo (AT) maurycy (DOT) com> wrote

According to the docs there's an argument missing:
dbbackup [ options ] target-directory

So you might want to try this version:
dbbackup -l mydb.log -c "DSN=mydb" g:\dbbackup\

Regards
Reimer


Drabina wrote:

Thanks for the tips. The syntax that worked for me is:

dbbackup -l mydb.log -c
"CommLinks=tcpip(Host=10.10.10.10;Port=2638);eng=S erver1;dbn=mydb;uid=dba;pwd=sql)
g:\dbbackup

As to the backup strategy, once a month we are doing full database backup
and those files get transferred off site. After that's done, I am going to
execute the live backup of the transaction log. There is no way to do full
database backup online because databases are GBs in size and we have about
50 of them. It would take forever on the 3Mb line we have setup between
servers. I hope this strategy is good.

You can do incremental log backups for that.

`Dbbackup -t -r -n`

Doing that on a daily, hourly basis is an option.

Using the live log for more than a backup of
the last few hours is probably not all that reasonable
and is not really the intention of the live backup
feature.

"Drabina" <mpromo (AT) maurycy (DOT) com> wrote

Thanks for the tip on the incremental backup.

Can incremental backup of log file be created so it does not rename and
truncate log on the main database? Basically, I would like to have DB+LOG on
the master database and DB+LOG20100105+LOG20100106+LOG20100107+... on the
backup server. We do backup and truncate log every week and I would like not
to mess with this procedure that's already in place.

Thanks.


"Nick Elson [Sybase iAnywhere]" <@nick@dot@elson@at@sybase@dot@com@> wrote
in message news:4b4e63c5 (AT) forums-1-dub (DOT) ..

Not currently. The design backs up the active log and rename it
and optionally match the backup to the renamed log. To get the
naming convention on the log backup one needs to rename the
the active (production) transaction log first.

To be clear this creates a series of non-overlapping transaction log
files that are contiguous. There is another alternative.

One can backup the log to a different directory every day of the
week and not rename it; chosing to delay the rename until the next
full backup. That way the backups overlap (with the current transaction
log backup being equivlent to yesterday's transaction log backup, plus
newer stuff added to the end).

If you have the space I do like this approach because it adds
redunancies to the backup (always a useful feature in backups)
and has a simpler-to-understand recovery step (apply the active
transcation log to the (full) backed up database and failing that
going back to the last viable nightly backup).



"Drabina" <mpromo (AT) maurycy (DOT) com> wrote

I checked the logs and they are small enough to transfer over the link we
have between servers. So I am writing application that will do transaction
log backups everyday.

Thanks for all the help.



"Nick Elson [Sybase iAnywhere]" <@nick@dot@elson@at@sybase@dot@com@> wrote
in message news:4b4f5f9f$1 (AT) forums-1-dub (DOT) ..