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SQL LDF not smaller after truncation

KB ID:	1876
Product:	Veeam Backup & Replication \| 7.0 \| 8.0 \| 9.0 \| 9.5 \| 10 \| 11
Published:	2014-04-21
Last Modified:	2021-09-24
Languages:	DE

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Challenge

After Veeam Backup & Replication or Veeam Agent for Windows successfully truncates a SQL server with Application-Aware Processing enabled, the LDF files do not become smaller.

Cause

This is due to the fact that the LDF file itself is a container, when truncation occurs the internals of the LDF are cleared and space is freed within it, but the LDF itself is not made smaller.

One could manually shrink or configure “Auto Shrink” to make the LDF itself physically smaller.

Solution

Considerations regarding Shrinking

The information provided below is a limited explanation of shrinking and is only intended to demonstrate how to perform a shrink operation. Veeam Support highly recommends before shrinking, you review options with your SQL Administrator and conduct independent research. Many tech articles recommend against shrinking when it is not strictly necessary. Before performing a shrink operation, you should fully understand the impacts of shrinking (e.g. fragmentation and performance).

Advised reading regarding SQL shrinking can be found here:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/databases/shrink-a-file

To view the actual free space within the LDF file, perform the following.

Open SQL Management Studio and connect to the SQL instance where the database in question is located.
Right-Click on the database and go to Tasks>Shrink>Files

Note: This screenshot shows the VeeamBackup database only as an example. One should perform the shrink task against the database whose log file needs to be explicitly shrunk.

Switch to "Log" under [File type:]

This will display the currently allocated space and the available free space. The database in this example is set for "Simple" recovery model, which keeps the log size low. When a SQL database is configured for "Full" recovery model, the LDF could be considerably larger depending on the time between truncation events.

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