Quick Scan Report – Extended Backup History
If the Quick Scan Report detects Extended Backup History, this may be an indication that the tables in msdb that keep a history of your backups are becoming bloated, and should be trimmed.
How much is too much when it comes to backup history. What we are talking about here is how much backup history do you want to keep, backup sizes, what file was written, etc. It is nice to keep as much as possible so that you can learn from this over time, but how much is too much depends on a number of things:
- How often are backups running? Do you have a single weekly full backup for one database, or do you have log backups every 5 minutes for 100+ databases.
- How long do you keep your backup files for? If you only keep your backup files for 2 weeks, but you have 8 years of backup history logged in tables, is that a bit excessive?
- How big do you want your MSDB database to be? Years of data stored in the backup history tables in MSDB can really bloat out the database.
- How fast is it to access insert into these tables. If they are too large it can really slow things down.
After thinking over these questions, you need to decide. I usually pick a number somewhere between 30 and 90 days to keep the backup history. For databases with frequent transaction log backups and/or a large number of databases I usually go with a smaller number.