[sims] How big is your Sims database

[zag]

I'm just sorting out a SQL backup each night for our Sims DB and noticed how large the actual .bak file is.

 

sims.bak = 2.3GB and zips down to about 500gb.

 

Is this typical?

 

That seems really big to me although we do use lesson by lesson registration features.

 

Is there any way to reduce the size for quicker backups?

[sjatkn]

Ours are much larger!

 

sims.bat = 5G

Zipped = 1.1G

 

We use PARS so I would guess that will make some difference. As to making smaller, I can't help there one of the SIMS experts around here might be able to help.

 

Our SIMS backup including zipping only takes about 10 minutes on our virtual server.

[localzuk]

SIMS.mdf is 1.5GB

Zipped, it goes down to 390Mb.

 

That's for a 550 pupil school who have been using it for a decade now. Don't think you're going to have much luck shrinking it, as it just holds all that old data, and will therefore continue to grow constantly.

 

This one has grown by about 800Mb in the last 6 years.

[vikpaw]

You mean it shrinks to 500MB!

My 4.3GB MDF becomes a 3.99GB .bak - this shows you how much space there is, but having a little isn't a big deal, if the difference is too big you could claw that back and alter growth settings but i doubt that's an issue.

It then compresses to a nice 1.25GB. In Feb it was 1.1GB. That's with up to 1500 students and lesson monitor plus lots of reporting.

I wouldn't say you've got a problem. How long does your backup take?

[zag]

I wouldn't say you've got a problem. How long does your backup take?

 

Backup only takes 4mins on the virtual ssd server, but I was hoping to reduce the stress on the disk drives over the years. Backing up 2gb of data each night seems a little much.

 

I guess its pretty standard though, just cant understand what takes up all the space! Maybe its the pupil pictures.

 

Just as a comparrison I run some mysql sites with millions of records and they take something ridiculous like 50mb of space which zips down to about 6mb

[vikpaw]

I run a separate photo database where we take the photos and then they get transferred to SIMS. The student area on that comes to around 3GB, so you're probably right, even though comparison isn't fair as mine is a custom db with the data in a weird proprietary format.

[matt40k]

2gb is a common size for a secondary school. I did have a school that's database was much larger and Capita was able to trim out some of the old data - such as back in 2004 teacher y changed their password. As interesting as that kinda info was, it was around 1GB!!

 

Would recommend a good backup solution such as Attix5\Redstor\RBUSS, it does a full backup then does a bit level compare and only uploads the changes. SSD wise, I would only worry about it if you've got non-enterprise grade discs.