Maintenance Plan: Delete old files not working right

We do a full backup every night. For some reason the backup files are
staying on the server for 5 full days. Since each backup is 6GB this
is presenting a disk space problem. As far as we can tell, we've
changed all of our SQLServer Maintenance backup jobs to delete any
files older than 23 hours, and even rebooted the server to ensure any
old settings that were set for 5 day file deletion are gone.
Does anyone know why the server is continuing to store files as old as
5 days when we've set our systems up to delete after 23 hours? What
are we missing?
Thanks,
-RobBelow KB might help:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;303292&Product=sql2k
Also, check out below great troubleshooting suggestions from Bill H at MS:
-- Log files don't delete --
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
Tibor Karaszi, SQL Server MVP
http://www.karaszi.com/sqlserver/default.asp
http://www.solidqualitylearning.com/
"RW" <rwuhrman@.hotmail.com> wrote in message news:a628b717.0410270951.39dc39f3@.posting.google.com...
> We do a full backup every night. For some reason the backup files are
> staying on the server for 5 full days. Since each backup is 6GB this
> is presenting a disk space problem. As far as we can tell, we've
> changed all of our SQLServer Maintenance backup jobs to delete any
> files older than 23 hours, and even rebooted the server to ensure any
> old settings that were set for 5 day file deletion are gone.
> Does anyone know why the server is continuing to store files as old as
> 5 days when we've set our systems up to delete after 23 hours? What
> are we missing?
> Thanks,
> -Rob