need help with using maintenance plan..

background sql2kt, nt5
wondering if someone can help me with a backup issue.
if i were to create a maintenance plan to back up all user databases on a
server (like 60 of them)
1. how can i backup just one database on demand outside the maintenance
plan? and have it recognized by the maintenance when the next scheduled
backup occures? (such as purge file and so on)
2. what would be the difference of putting all 60 databases in one
maintenance vs. seperating them into 3 plans with staggering schedule?
any advice would be greatly appreciated.> if i were to create a maintenance plan to back up all user databases on a
> server (like 60 of them)
> 1. how can i backup just one database on demand outside the maintenance
> plan? and have it recognized by the maintenance when the next scheduled
> backup occures? (such as purge file and so on)
> 2. what would be the difference of putting all 60 databases in one
> maintenance vs. seperating them into 3 plans with staggering schedule?
> any advice would be greatly appreciated.
1. you can always right click on a db and backup from there. i believe the
dbmp determines which backups to delete by reading the
msdb.sysdbmaintplan_history table. you would probably have to "forge" an
entry in that table to get your dbmp to delete your manual backups. i
wouldn't recommend this although i've done something similar with no ill
effects.
i usually keep a couple of weeks of backups on disk. every once in a while
i
go through those backup directories looking for old manual backups that don'
t
need to be there any more and manually delete them.
2. one dbmp for 60 db's will backup them up one at a time in alphabetical
order. 3 seperate plans is much more of a headache to manage. the biggest
problem is that when you add a new db, if you forget to add it to one of
those 3 dbmp's, it won't get backed up. if you delete a db without changing
the dbmp, you'll get errors when the jobs run trying to work on that db
that's been deleted. if you have a dbmp for all user databases, then you
don't have to modify a dbmp every time you add a new db or delete a db.|||thanks for such a good advice.
regarding #1, your suggestion works.
but if i want call that backup routine from the other scheduled task using
sql script, how would I know the backup dump file name currently available?
since the maintenance plan generate a new file name each day such as
MyDb_2004050401800.bak
"ch" <ch@.dontemailme.com> wrote in message
news:4097D623.1F2E0C9B@.dontemailme.com...
a[vbcol=seagreen]
> 1. you can always right click on a db and backup from there. i believe
the
> dbmp determines which backups to delete by reading the
> msdb.sysdbmaintplan_history table. you would probably have to "forge" an
> entry in that table to get your dbmp to delete your manual backups. i
> wouldn't recommend this although i've done something similar with no ill
> effects.
> i usually keep a couple of weeks of backups on disk. every once in a
while i
> go through those backup directories looking for old manual backups that
don't
> need to be there any more and manually delete them.
> 2. one dbmp for 60 db's will backup them up one at a time in alphabetical
> order. 3 seperate plans is much more of a headache to manage. the
biggest
> problem is that when you add a new db, if you forget to add it to one of
> those 3 dbmp's, it won't get backed up. if you delete a db without
changing
> the dbmp, you'll get errors when the jobs run trying to work on that db
> that's been deleted. if you have a dbmp for all user databases, then you
> don't have to modify a dbmp every time you add a new db or delete a db.
>