Backup databases based on wildcard on database name We have a MS SQL 2016 databse server with a number of databases that need backing up.  We are using a maintenance plan to backup all databases at the moment but running low on space on one of our drives.

We have the following databases:

foo1
foo2
..
..
foo10
fred01
fred02

How would we go about swapping out the T-SQL in the maintenance plan task to only backup the databases foo* and not the fred databases?

I could select the databases manually but over time new foo databases are added and I want to ensure that these are automatically backed up without needing to update the maintenance plan.

Thanks
Use T-sql to query sys.databases and backup your databases. one free solution is to use Ola's backup solution

A. Back up all user databases, using checksums and compression; verify the backup; and delete old backup files

EXECUTE dbo.DatabaseBackup
@Databases = '%foo%', -- only databases that will have foo in name
@Directory = '\\server\Backup',
@BackupType = 'FULL',
@Verify = 'Y',
@Compress = 'Y',
@CheckSum = 'Y',
@CleanupTime = 24


Change parameters as per your needs.