Sql update transaction log full

Privacy policy. Applies to: SQL Server all supported versions. Before attempting to open this notebook, check that Azure Data Studio is installed on your local machine. To install, go to Learn how to install Azure Data Studio. Open Notebook in Azure Data Studio. This topic discusses possible responses to a full transaction log and suggests how to avoid it in the future.

The log can fill when the database is online, or in recovery. If the log fills while the database is online, the database remains online but can only be read, not updated. In either case, user action is required to make log space available.

This article is focused on SQL Server. The appropriate response to a full transaction log depends on what conditions caused the log to fill. Common causes include:. The following specific steps will help you find the reason for a full transaction log and resolve the issue. A very common solution to this problem is to ensure transaction log backups are performed for your database which will ensure the log is truncated.

If no recent transaction log history is indicated for the database with a full transaction log, the solution to the problem is straightforward: resume regular transaction log backups of the database. There is a difference between truncating a transaction log and shrinking a transaction log. Log Truncation occurs normally during a transaction log backup, and is a logical operation which removes committed records inside the log, whereas log shrinking reclaims physical space on the file system by reducing the file size.

A log file can be shrunk only if there is empty space inside the log file to reclaim. Shrinking a log file alone cannot solve the problem of a full log file, instead, you must discover why the log file is full and cannot be truncated. Option 2: If your log file is filled up, it is a good idea to take log backup and clean up your log file. However, this will not work if your transaction is still bigger than available space on your log file. Option 3: You may try out to change the recovery model to simple and try your transaction again, however, the success rate of this solution is very low and also there is a chance that you are risking your entire backup strategy.

Do not do this until you run out of all the options. Option 4: Add another log file on the different disk and run your transactions again. Once the transaction is completed, you can clean up your transaction log by following option 1 or option 2. Once you add another log file and attempt to run the transaction again, you will see it goes through fine.

Restarting a server instance resizes the transaction log of the tempdb database to its original, pre-autogrow size. This can reduce the performance of the tempdb transaction log. You can avoid this overhead by increasing the size of the tempdb transaction log after starting or restarting the server instance.

For more information, see tempdb Database. Note the following:. The file growth increment on a log file should be sufficiently large to avoid frequent expansion. A good pointer to properly size a transaction log is monitoring the amount of log occupied during:.

A small growth increment can generate too many small VLFs and can reduce performance. To determine the optimal VLF distribution for the current transaction log size of all databases in a given instance, and the required growth increments to achieve the required size, see this script.

A large growth increment can generate too few and large VLFs and can also affect performance. Even with autogrow enabled, you can receive a message that the transaction log is full, if it cannot grow fast enough to satisfy the needs of your query. That process was solely responsible for the file growth. As Jimbo already said, this does not fix the OP's problem. It may free up some currently unused space, but as soon as a long transaction is running again, the space will be taken up again and probably fail even earlier — Marcel.

That didn't fix the problem. My log have only bytes. I think this problem started after I have done a backup yesterday. This is definitely the fix if you have a couple megabytes left to spare on the full drive.

It might fix A problem. It does not fix the problem reported in the OP. Show 2 more comments. I had this error once and it ended up being the server's hard drive that run out of disk space. PretoriaCoder PretoriaCoder 8 8 silver badges 13 13 bronze badges. Read the OP's updates. This turned out to be the issue. That was the case for me as well. I found a completely unrelated program had created a ridiculously huge log file over GB, holy smoke! Once I cleared that up, the issue went away.

Is this a one time script, or regularly occurring job? Mike Henderson Mike Henderson 1, 15 15 silver badges 26 26 bronze badges.

I wouldn't say it's a one-time job, but it is rare that we have to do it. I didn't create a second log file, but I did increase the initial size of my current log file to 30GB. During my last run it was set to 20GB and it still failed. Would having a second log file be better somehow than having one big one given that I only have one drive to work with? As I recall now, the additional file mostly enabled us to access another, bigger drive.

How big is the data being imported? If you're importing 30 GB of data, you're log file may need to be at least as big. Log size is the key. The current task failed again and I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the size of the log file at the point that it failed.

It only processed half of the accounts and was already at 53GB. It looks like I'm going to have to clear somewhere in the vicinity of another GB to be able to complete this process. Show 1 more comment.

The issue is that autogrow won't work while there is an open transaction. Do you have any idea how big the transaction will be? It improves performance. SQL Server will autogrow the log during a transaction if it needs more space to complete that transaction.

Hi Ross, I've provided my logic for thinking the open transaction is preventing the growth in an update to the question.