What is MSDBData MDF?

What is the purpose of Msdb DB?

The msdb database is used by SQL Server Agent for scheduling alerts and jobs and by other features such as SQL Server Management Studio, Service Broker and Database Mail. For example, SQL Server automatically maintains a complete online backup-and-restore history within tables in msdb.

What is true about Msdb?

The msdb database is mostly known as “the SQL Server Agent database” because it stores information of all SQL Agent jobs as their configuration and their execution history. But it is not dedicated mainly to SQL Server Agent. Features like the Service Broker or the Database Mail also stores data in msdb database.

How do I find Msdb?

If you open SQL Server Management Studio, you can see the msdb database under the System Databases. The database files will be in the default data file location with the file names as MSDBData. mdf and MSDBLog.

Why is MSDB database so large?

MSDB stores backup and restore history. Imagine a server with 2000 databases that takes a log backup of all of them every 15 minutes. That's 192,000 new rows into the backupset and backupmediaset tables EVERY DAY! Keeping a few weeks or months of history can cause the size of MSDB to get very large.