Log Shipping

SQL Backup provides a wizard to guide you through the process of setting up log shipping, to ship transaction logs from a primary server to a secondary server. For example, you may want to do this if you are maintaining a 'standby' server as a backup to your primary server. You use SQL Backup to perform regular backups of the primary server, and restore them on the secondary SQL Server.

In the log shipping process:

Transaction log backups are performed on the source database on the primary SQL Server (for example the production database).
The backup files are copied to a network share that can be accessed by both SQL Servers.
The backup files are restored to the destination database on the standby SQL Server.

The database must use the full or bulk-logged recovery model.

The wizard sets up SQL Server Agent backup jobs that use SQL Backup to perform the backup and restore operations.

When you use SQL Backup to ship your transaction logs, the transaction log backups are not immediately restored on the secondary server; you specify a time delay (recommended) or you can specify a separate schedule the restore operation.

The first time the log shipping job is run, SQL Backup creates a full backup of the source database and restores it on the destination SQL Server prior to creating the log shipping tasks. This is to ensure that the destination database is in the correct state for restoring the transaction log backups.

Note that you can use the Log Shipping wizard with remote SQL Servers only if SQL Backup Pro is installed on both of the SQL Servers.

You cannot ship transaction logs from a SQL Server 2005 database to a SQL Server 2000 database, because of the differences in their structures (but you can ship from a SQL Server 2000 database to a SQL Server 2005 database).

To start the Log Shipping wizard, click Log Shipping. The Log Shipping wizard comprises the following steps:

Step 1:	Select the database that you want to back up, and the database on which you want to restore the transaction log backups.
Step 2:	Specify the backup file location and settings for the transaction log backup, and set options for existing backup files.
Step 3:	Choose the settings for restoring transaction log backups.
Step 4:	Specify the network share to which the transaction log backups will be copied.
Step 5:	Specify the schedule for backing up the transaction logs, and for restoring the backups.
Step 6:	Review your log shipping settings.