Running backup from a different computer

Hexteque

I am running a setup where I have 357 databases that I need to backup nightly. The backup process takes quite a long time and hogs a lot of resources. I would like to reduce this footprint on our server and am contemplating how I can do this.

Can backup be run on a seperate machine rather than the SQL Server itself?

Bonus question: Can compression be turned off?

Brian Donahue

Hello,

The most common solutions for this problem are to run split file backups (which will cause multithreading) and to change the compression level down to one or two. I don't forsee ever running the actual backup process on a different machine because the software operates on the buffers in local memory.

In some circumstances, compression can cause unnecessary overhead, for example if you are backing up data that has already been compressed, for example a source control database that stored its' code in compressed format in IMAGE columns.

If you want to disable compression, please contact us and we can send you an update that will add the ability to script COMPRESSION=0, which will effectively disable compression if you have this sort of database. Our email address, as always, is support@red-gate.com