Running SQL Server Express which has no SQL Agent, so the usual scheduled maintenance plan route is closed to me. How do people automate backups on Express?
How to schedule automatic SQL Server backups on Express edition?
Solved SQL & Databases
RK
Rachel Kim April 22, 2020
2 replies
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Right, Express has no Agent. Two working patterns:
1
Write a T-SQL backup script, save it as a .sql file, then call it from Windows Task Scheduler with
sqlcmd -S .\SQLEXPRESS -i backup.sql on a nightly trigger.2
Include a dated filename in the script so backups do not overwrite, and add a cleanup step that deletes files older than your retention window.
3
Ola Hallengren's free maintenance scripts do backup, verify and cleanup properly and run fine on Express through Task Scheduler. Worth adopting over a hand rolled script.
Ola's scripts plus a Task Scheduler trigger. Nightly backups with retention on Express. Solved.