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Databases
are without doubt getting larger by the day. Data will simply
accumulate over time, unless you partition your data by time
periods. The effect of this is that backups get larger, and the
time required to perform those backups increase
proportionately.
Enter third party backup applications. What exactly do they do?
Well, at the very core of it, they are able to compress your backup
data. Some offer the option to encrypt your data as well. Others
may offer a slick looking GUI to better manage your backups.
However, backup compression is what most users are after. So, why
are those backup applications so popular again?
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compressed
backup data creates smaller backup files
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time
taken to back up is also usually faster. This is only true if the
bottleneck was the write throughput. See Speeding up backups for a more detailed
explanation.
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time
taken to restore is also usually faster
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encryption,
where offerred, provides an additional level of security
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How about the costs? Well:
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you've
have to budget for the purchase and maintenance costs of the third
party tool
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CPU
requirements will increase, depending on the compression algorithm
used. If your CPU on the primary server is already maxed out, using
a backup tool would affect server performance even more.
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Some of the products that are available on the market are
SQL Backup
from
Red Gate
Software,
Litespeed from
Quest,
SQLSafe from
Idera and
HyperBac from
Hyperbac
Technologies.
| | | | NOTE: SQL Server 2008 will offer compressed backups in the
Enterprise edition. | | | |
Now, the most common question when faced with using a third party
application is 'Is this safe?'. I mean, you're trusting your entire
organization's data to a third-party vendor. Like, could it get any
more major than that? Wouldn't it be good to know a little about
how exactly these applications are going about getting the data?
Well, that's covered in this article, and who knows, you might
even be able to roll your own backup application after reading that
article!
Discuss or comment on this article on our Facebook group.
Document history
| 6/27/2008 | Initial release. |
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