SQL Server Logs – maximum size

One of those SQL Server settings that can have unexpected results. The Maximum size for error log files in KB.

The danger with this is that if you set this number too small, and you only have a few error logs being kept around, you may not have as many logs as you need to diagnose problems.

We ran into an issue at a client recently where they asked, “was anything strange going on with our SQL Server at 9:15 this morning.” We went to check and found out that they only had 30 minutes of SQL Server logs due to this setting being set to small.

0 should not be considered too small as 0 means go to unlimited size (or at least until the disk is full).

I recommend that before setting this value that you investigate and determine the average size, and the amount of logs that you see over time before just picking a number to enter here.