BE SQL Agent vs SQL dump (.bak)

[Francois_Petit_]

We are planning on using be 2012 CASO and dedupe with replication to mms at second site to backup various servers including files, exchange and MS SQL.

We are discussing options with DBA team and they are not comfortable with the way BE agent backs up SQL databases. I am personally fairly open and believe that symantec wouldn't be in business if their sql backup weren't up to scratch. However, I am not DBA and therefore not in a position to argue either way.

We have a mixture of simple mode and roll forward. Our DBA team run backups dumping to .bak files. If we were to back these up, would dedupe work as well on these as would the be sql agent.

We don't mind a 2 stage backup/restore, this is really not important, what we want is a solution that is 100% viable and will keep everyone happy.

I wold like to know your thoughts / experience.

Thanks.

[CraigV]

Hi,

It's a file so it should dedupe. How well though is another story...the only way to know is to do a test run and see what the results are.

The agent would allow online SQL redirected restores and online restores onto the sam SQL server...there are big benefits to this.

Read my article below on this:

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/stating-case-using-agents-backup-exec

Thanks!

[pkh]

When BE dumps a SQL database, it is actually calling the SQL Server API to do the dump, so it is the same thing as using SQL Studio to do the dump.

It is a lot easier to do restores, especially point-in-time restores with BE.

[Francois_Petit_]

Thanks Craig. I am actually trying to convice DBA that the BE agent is the way to go. Quick queston, with BE SQL agent, can you restore database to another location/server/share (that doesn't have a license) pkh, thanks. If the BE agent calls theSQL server api to take the dump of the database, then the output would be similar to the one produced by sql itself. Does this mean that the back up would dedupe at a similar ratio?

[pkh]

To re-direct a SQL restore, you need to install RAWS on the target SQL machine.  Hence you need a SQL licence for that target SQL machine.

There is no way to tell the dedup rate because while the information dumped from the database is the same, we don't know what other information BE and SQL Studio includes in the final output.