Some interesting suggestions here, which all seem to show misunderstanding about how log backups work. A log backup contains ALL transaction log generated since the previous log backup, regardless of what full or differential backups are taken in the interim. Stopping log backups or moving to daily full backups will have no effect on the log backup sizes. The only thing that affects the transaction log is a log backup, once the log backup chain has started.
The only exception to this rule is if the log backup chain has been broken (e.g. by going to the SIMPLE recovery model, reverting from a database snapshot, truncating the log using BACKUP LOG WITH NO_LOG/TRUNCATE_ONLY), in which case the first log backup will contain all the transaction log since the last full backup - which restarts the log backup chain; or if the log backup chain hasn't been started - when you switch into FULL for the first time, you operate in a kind of pseudo-SIMPLE recovery model until the first full backup is taken.
To answer your original question, without going into the SIMPLE recovery model, you're going to have to suck up backing up all the transaction log. Depending on the actions you're taking, you could take more frequent log backups to reduce their size, or do more targeted database.
If you can post some info about the maintenance ops you're doing, I can help you optimize them. Are you, by any chance, doing index rebuilds followed by a shrink database to reclaim the space used by the index rebuilds?
If you have no other activity in the database while the maintenance is occuring, you could do the following:
- make sure user activity is stopped
- take a final log backup (this allows you to recover right up to the point of maintenance starting)
- switch to the SIMPLE recovery model
- perform maintenance - the log will truncate on each checkpoint
- switch to the FULL recovery model and take a full backup
- continue as normal
Hope this helps - looking forward to more info.
Thanks
[Edit: after all the discussion about whether a full backup can alter the size of a subsequent log backup (it can't) I put together a comprehensive blog post with background material and a script that proves it. Check it out at https://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/misconceptions-around-the-log-and-log-backups-how-to-convince-yourself/]
Check your reporting queries. Do you have any that have DISTINCT in them? Do any of them have a cartesian joins?
Do any of the reporting queries access linked servers as members of a join? If so this can cause tempdb log and database to grow.
When the reports are running in the morning do any of them crash?
Best Answer
Although Update Statistics makes use of tempdb(Click here for more on Linchi's Blog) shouldn't really blow it unless it is set extremely small size.
Although you have Auto Update Stats switched on it is recommended to update the stats regularly for all queries to make use of the latest stats reflecting the most current data distribution.
In response to your question Yes you can switch off the job though you may wish to consider amalgamating the Update Stats job into your regular maintenance plan where in replace the explicit "Update Statistics" with "sp_updatestats" which will only update stats on those tables which require it.
Also, as a best practice you might wish to consider just re-organising the indexes which have less than 30% fragmentation and rebuild only ones which have more than 30% fragmentation. More info can be found under Section D towards the bottom of the page here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188917.aspx
Hope this helps.