Backup procedures are not as crucial at remote databases as at the consolidated database. You may choose to rely on replication to the consolidated database as a data backup method. In the event of a media failure, the remote database would have to be re-extracted from the consolidated database, and any operations that have not been replicated would be lost. (You could use the Log Translation utility to attempt to recover lost operations. See Log Translation utility (dbtran)).

Even if you do choose to rely on replication to protect remote database data, backups may still need to be done periodically at remote databases to prevent the transaction log from growing too large. You should use the same option (rename and restart the log) as at the consolidated database, running the Message Agent so that it has access to the renamed log files. If you set the delete_old_logs option to On at the remote database, the old log files will be deleted automatically by the Message Agent when they are no longer needed.

Automatic transaction log renaming

You can use the -x Message Agent option to eliminate the need to rename the transaction log on the remote computer when the database server is shut down. The -x option renames the transaction log after it has been scanned for outgoing messages.