I'm somewhat of an accidental DBA, being a developer who inherited a couple of database servers (2005 and 2008) from someone who knew little about database administration, and seemingly had even less interest in learning more about the subject.
I'm learning as I go, and am currently trying to figure out transaction log files.
All our databases have been set up with the simple recovery model and autoshrink. I've understood that using autoshrink is usually a horrible idea, but it's my understanding this was done in order to stop the transaction logs from growing out of control. (Does autoshrink actually shrink the log file(s) or just the DB?)
I found this about SQL Server 2012, and was wondering if it's true about 2005 and/or 2008, and exactly what it means: "When a database uses the simple recovery model, the Database Engine truncates the transaction log after a checkpoint. [...] The Database Engine triggers an automatic checkpoint under the simple recovery model when the virtual log becomes 70 percent full." Where is the virtual log size specified?
I want to disable auto shrink on all databases, but before I do that, I need to know that the log files won't grow out of control quickly.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.