SQL Transaction Log backup while monthly tape job is running

[DaveWatkins]

Hi

We do a monthly full backup to tape and this takes about 24 hours. I have a pre and post script to disable all the backup jobs while this occurs to stop them interrupting the tape job and this works well, however while all the jobs are disabled the SQL Log Backups are also stopped. This means we have 24 hours of log growth, and while this isn't a deal breaker, it does make the log files grow to a size that's only ever used for this period once a month.

I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas about being able to stop the Database backup job for this period, but leave the log backups running, assuming that wouldn't affect the running tape job, which is something i haven't tested and now that I type it may be a blocker to any solution anyway. I've thought about deleting the jobs schedule and recreating it via PS (assuming that's possible) but I'd rather not do something quite that drastic if there are other options.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks

[foggy]

You can try to set backup window for the backup job prior to the tape job execution (via PowerShell script) so that it does not trigger during that time. SQL logs backup job will still be executed, as far as I remember.

Btw, you're running reversed or forever forward incremental backups, right? Since simple forward incremental job shouldn't interrupt the tape job, provided no virtual synthetics is involved.

[DaveWatkins]

HI Foggy

Yes, we're running reversed incrementals so that we can get a full backup to tape without having to run virtual full's or try and sync a synthetic fulls to the tape job. I'll have a look at the backup window option, looking in the GUI it looks like it'll allow the control I need, just have to get the powershell side written

Thanks
Dave

[foggy]

Feel free to ask for assistance in our PowerShell subforum.

[DaveWatkins]

Thanks Foggy, I have done already as the documentation around those cmdlets is pretty sparse. I would be really useful if each cmdlet had an example of it's usage or even a couple

[DaveWatkins]

To clarify my previous comment, i don't just mean a one line example, I mean a complete code example, in my case I need to use New-VBRBackupWindow which has a single line example, but you need to use it against an object created by another cmdlet which wasted an hours or so. Of course I've either found a bug in that cmdlet or I'm doing something wrong (hence the whole example being useful) since even the example doesn't appear to do what it described, but that's all in my post in the powershell forum