Can I Backup Across the Network?

By Bill Graziano on 17 August 2000 | Tags: Backup/Restore

Alex writes "Every night I dump my db to a file using a scheduled backup process. I know this is an elementary question, but I haven't been able to figure out how to get the backup to write to a file on another machine. My backup to a local disk protects me from stuipd human errors, but obviously if there's a hardware problem on the machine I'll be in bad shape. Right now I copy the backup file manually. There has to be a better way. I am running SQL Server 7 with the latest service packs."

(Updated by sqlguru) You can backup over the network. I prefer to use UNC paths because mapping drives under SQL Server can cause some weirdness (Hmm... maybe an article on that).

My favorite method is to not even muck with backup devices:

BACKUP DATABASE Foo TO DISK = '\\myserver\myshare\foo.bak' WITH INIT

Bam! Network backups.

SQLGuru