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Checking BackupsLocate this document in the navigation structure

Use

This section describes how to check backups with SQL Server Management Studio.

Prerequisites

You use the SQL Server Agent which is responsible for scheduling and executing jobs. It provides information about all scheduled jobs and their current status.

Note

If a backup is not scheduled to run at a specific time, it is not registered as a job. Therefore it is not visible in the job overview or job history. You will only find information in the SQL Server Error Log. For more information, seeViewing the Error Log with SQL Server Management Studio.

Procedure

  1. In the Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio, expand the server.
  2. In the Object Explorer, expand SQL Server Agent for your server, and expand Jobs.

    An overview of all scheduled jobs is displayed.

  3. To view the information about a job, double-click or right-click on it and select Properties.

    The Job Properties window appears with all the details about the job. It provides general information about the particular steps of the job, job schedules, alerts, notification and target server information for that particular job.

  4. To view the history of a particular backup job, select the job and right-click on View History.

    A new window with all the jobs in the left pane and the log summary of the selected job in the right-hand pane opens. You can view the individual steps of each step when expanding it with the + button. The details of the selected job step are displayed in the right-hand bottom window.

  5. When you have verified all available messages, look at the SQL Server Error Log, which contains additional information you may require.
    Note

    You should never clear the job history manually as this permanently deletes the information. By default, a maximum of 100 execution histories is kept for one SQL Server job and a maximum of 1000 histories for all jobs together.

    If you want to increase these values, you must modify the SQL Server Agent Properties as follows: Right-click the SQL Server Agent and choose Properties. In the SQL Server Agent Properties window, select History. Make sure that the setting for Maximum job history log size is always set to at least 10 times of that of Maximum job history rows per job. The history entries are stored in the msdb database.