Mantanace Plan not deleting old files

I have a maintanace Plan establishe that is working excep
for on nagging item. The plan does both full backups and
transaction log backups each day. It is supposed to
delete files older than 3 days old but does not. I have
to manually go and clear the old files on a regular basis
to keep from filling up the disk. I have not seen any
error or know what to look for to see if something is
wrong. I thought that if a full backup was done that it
emptyed the transaction logs but that dies not appear to
be the case either and is why I have the transition logs
in the mainance plan. Any information on how to get the
old fikes to delete?Here is a good summary of the normal issues related to this by Bill from MS:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q303292
This is likely to be either a permissions problem or a sharing violation
problem. The maintenance plan is run as a job, and jobs are run by the
SQLServerAgent service.
Permissions:
1. Determine the startup account for the SQLServerAgent service
(Start|Programs|Administrative tools|Services|SQLServerAgent|Startup). This
account is the security context for jobs, and thus the maintenance plan.
2. If SQLServerAgent is started using LocalSystem (as opposed to a domain
account) then skip step 3.
3. On that box, log onto NT as that account. Using Explorer, attempt to
delete an expired backup. If that succeeds then go to Sharing Violation
section.
4. Log onto NT with an account that is an administrator and use Explorer to
look at the Properties|Security of the folder (where the backups reside)
and ensure the SQLServerAgent startup account has Full Control. If the
SQLServerAgent startup account is LocalSystem, then the account to consider
is SYSTEM.
5. In NT, if an account is a member of an NT group, and if that group has
Access is Denied, then that account will have Access is Denied, even if
that account is also a member of the Administrators group. Thus you may
need to check group permissions (if the Startup Account is a member of a
group).
6. Keep in mind that permissions (by default) are inherited from a parent
folder. Thus, if the backups are stored in C:\bak, and if someone had
denied permission to the SQLServerAgent startup account for C:\, then
C:\bak will inherit access is denied.
Sharing violation:
This is likely to be rooted in a timing issue, with the most likely cause
being another scheduled process (such as NT Backup or Anti-Virus software)
having the backup file open at the time when the SQLServerAgent (i.e., the
maintenance plan job) tried to delete it.
1. Download filemon and handle from www.sysinternals.com.
2. I am not sure whether filemon can be scheduled, or you might be able to
use NT scheduling services to start filemon just before the maintenance
plan job is started, but the filemon log can become very large, so it would
be best to start it some short time before the maintenance plan starts.
3. Inspect the filemon log for another process that has that backup file
open (if your lucky enough to have started filemon before this other
process grabs the backup folder), and inspect the log for the results when
the SQLServerAgent agent attempts to open that same file.
4. Schedule the job or that other process to do their work at different
times.
5. You can use the handle utility if you are around at the time when the
job is scheduled to run.
If the backup files are going to a \\share or a mapped drive (as opposed to
local drive), then you will need to modify the above (with respect to where
the tests and utilities are run).
Finally, inspection of the maintenance plan's history report might be
useful.
Thanks,
Bill Hollinshead
Microsoft, SQL Server
Andrew J. Kelly SQL MVP
"Jim Abel" <jim.abel@.lmco.com> wrote in message
news:177f01c49cbe$504699e0$a301280a@.phx.gbl...
> I have a maintanace Plan establishe that is working excep
> for on nagging item. The plan does both full backups and
> transaction log backups each day. It is supposed to
> delete files older than 3 days old but does not. I have
> to manually go and clear the old files on a regular basis
> to keep from filling up the disk. I have not seen any
> error or know what to look for to see if something is
> wrong. I thought that if a full backup was done that it
> emptyed the transaction logs but that dies not appear to
> be the case either and is why I have the transition logs
> in the mainance plan. Any information on how to get the
> old fikes to delete?|||i had the same problem. RIght-click on the maintenance plan and look at the
job history for any errors.
The problem I had was someone set up a maintenance plan to backup ALL
databases and to do transaction lo backups periodically. The trouble with
that is the system DBs (and any user DBs that are not set to FULL recovery
mode) cannot have Transaction log backups performed on them. So the Backups
were running, but the delete step was not running because the transaction log
backup step failed for some of the DBs.
hope that helps
"Andrew J. Kelly" wrote:
> Here is a good summary of the normal issues related to this by Bill from MS:
>
> http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q303292
> This is likely to be either a permissions problem or a sharing violation
> problem. The maintenance plan is run as a job, and jobs are run by the
> SQLServerAgent service.
> Permissions:
> 1. Determine the startup account for the SQLServerAgent service
> (Start|Programs|Administrative tools|Services|SQLServerAgent|Startup). This
> account is the security context for jobs, and thus the maintenance plan.
> 2. If SQLServerAgent is started using LocalSystem (as opposed to a domain
> account) then skip step 3.
> 3. On that box, log onto NT as that account. Using Explorer, attempt to
> delete an expired backup. If that succeeds then go to Sharing Violation
> section.
> 4. Log onto NT with an account that is an administrator and use Explorer to
> look at the Properties|Security of the folder (where the backups reside)
> and ensure the SQLServerAgent startup account has Full Control. If the
> SQLServerAgent startup account is LocalSystem, then the account to consider
> is SYSTEM.
> 5. In NT, if an account is a member of an NT group, and if that group has
> Access is Denied, then that account will have Access is Denied, even if
> that account is also a member of the Administrators group. Thus you may
> need to check group permissions (if the Startup Account is a member of a
> group).
> 6. Keep in mind that permissions (by default) are inherited from a parent
> folder. Thus, if the backups are stored in C:\bak, and if someone had
> denied permission to the SQLServerAgent startup account for C:\, then
> C:\bak will inherit access is denied.
> Sharing violation:
> This is likely to be rooted in a timing issue, with the most likely cause
> being another scheduled process (such as NT Backup or Anti-Virus software)
> having the backup file open at the time when the SQLServerAgent (i.e., the
> maintenance plan job) tried to delete it.
> 1. Download filemon and handle from www.sysinternals.com.
> 2. I am not sure whether filemon can be scheduled, or you might be able to
> use NT scheduling services to start filemon just before the maintenance
> plan job is started, but the filemon log can become very large, so it would
> be best to start it some short time before the maintenance plan starts.
> 3. Inspect the filemon log for another process that has that backup file
> open (if your lucky enough to have started filemon before this other
> process grabs the backup folder), and inspect the log for the results when
> the SQLServerAgent agent attempts to open that same file.
> 4. Schedule the job or that other process to do their work at different
> times.
> 5. You can use the handle utility if you are around at the time when the
> job is scheduled to run.
> If the backup files are going to a \\share or a mapped drive (as opposed to
> local drive), then you will need to modify the above (with respect to where
> the tests and utilities are run).
> Finally, inspection of the maintenance plan's history report might be
> useful.
> Thanks,
> Bill Hollinshead
> Microsoft, SQL Server
>
> --
> Andrew J. Kelly SQL MVP
>
> "Jim Abel" <jim.abel@.lmco.com> wrote in message
> news:177f01c49cbe$504699e0$a301280a@.phx.gbl...
> > I have a maintanace Plan establishe that is working excep
> > for on nagging item. The plan does both full backups and
> > transaction log backups each day. It is supposed to
> > delete files older than 3 days old but does not. I have
> > to manually go and clear the old files on a regular basis
> > to keep from filling up the disk. I have not seen any
> > error or know what to look for to see if something is
> > wrong. I thought that if a full backup was done that it
> > emptyed the transaction logs but that dies not appear to
> > be the case either and is why I have the transition logs
> > in the mainance plan. Any information on how to get the
> > old fikes to delete?
>
>