Question : What are the disadvantages to circular logging on an Exchange 2003 Server?

Hi,
Recently, I ran into an issue with the transaction logs not being purged after full backups with Symantec Veritas BackUp Exec 11d software.  The purge committed logs is checked, but for whatever reason, it hasn't cleaned the logs out.

I know that there are 3 ways to clean the logs 1) Use a software like Backup Exec to perform a full backup 2) Enable circular logging 3) Manually delete the logs.

Obviously those are in order as preferred.  I tried a full backup, but failed so I enabled circular logging for the time being to get the Exchange 2003 Server back up and running.

So, from the looks of it, I am not sure why I did not enable circular logging before.

Could someone share with me the advantages/disadvantages of circular logging on an Exchange 2003 Server?

Thank you for your time.

Bob

Answer : What are the disadvantages to circular logging on an Exchange 2003 Server?

Those options are by no means the preferred ways of dealing with transaction logs.

The only way to clear them is a full backup - anything else is reckless, and reduces your restore options.

If your backup job is not flushing the logs, it is probably doing one of those horrible mailbox backups, and not an information store backup like it should be.  Fix that, and the logs will fush.

The downsides to circular logging is simply that if you need to restore, you will lose everything since the backup - if you have the transaction logs you could do a restore, and then replay the transaction logs to be at the same state as you were when it crashed.

While that may not seem like much at all, bear in mind that you have no full backup.  How do I know?  If you did, the logs would flush.

Kieran