SQL backup sanity check

Bansisingh

First, I don't have a background in SQL, so be gentle, but please correct me if I'm off-base on something.

Long story, short: New SQL 2016 server built in January on Server 2012 r2. All best practices and recommendations from MS, PURE (iSCSI), Litespeed, and Brent Ozar were followed. We had a third-party SQL specialist review the server, and he suggested no changes.

We experienced several major issues with Litespeed, including failed log shipping (litespeed invokes robocopy using "/DCOPY:DA" flag, which locks the destination folder to write attributes), locked/corrupted backup files (never resolved), and actual SQL crashes due to a litespeed dll causing a memory violation (possibly resolved in SQL CU7 and beyond).

We did not have these problems  with older versions of Litespeed on older versions of SQL. But Litespeed was unable to resolve these issues, so we removed all traces of it and moved all backup and log shipping jobs to native jobs - and have been 100% stable since, a couple months.

But native backups, and especially restores, take too long. We've began using multiple files to invoke more threads, but this doesn't resolve the problem with restore times.

We've been evaluating Red Gate backup tools on a test server as an alternative.

So before we buy Red Gate or reinstall Litespeed, the question is, what do you use for backups, and how do I convince myself and my boss that our server will be stable? Have you had these problems, and what did you do to resolve them? I'm specifically concerned with litespeed.exe locking a bak file so that it can never finish. If we can't feel good about a third party tool after the problems we've been through, we'll probably stay native and just deal with the slowness.

It should probably be noted that we couldn't be anymore disappointed in Litespeed support, as they were never able to resolve any of our issues, and always insisted everything was a MS problem, and MS would just point right back at Litespeed. After removing Litespeed, the problems are all gone, so...

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