SQL Compression in a B2D job

[TornadoWire1]

Hello,

Since upgrading to Backup Exec 2010 R3 I have noticed the option for SQL compression for SQL 2008 databases.

I have tried enabling this for a our weekly full database backup to disk job, however the size of the database remains the same (13.5Gb). If I perform a native SQL backup with compression I can get the size down to about 2Gb.

Any ideas what the problem might be?

Kind Regards

Simon

[CraigV · Accepted solution]

Hi Simon,

Check the Symantec TN below on setting the options for SQL backups in BE 2010...pay special attention to the compression setting and make sure you comply with that:

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=HOWTO24058

There are some requirements listed.

Thanks!

EDIT: Also make sure that you have patched your media server with the latest patches and that you pushed those out to any remote servers you might have.

[TornadoWire1]

Hi Craig,

Noticed I had the AOFO ticked on that backup job which hopefully is the root cause. I will run another job without to try that.

Also another query. Native backups are significantly quicker than Backup Exec backups. I appreciate that backing up to another server will slow the process down, but a native backup takes about 2 minutes, opposed to 30 minutes via BE. Is that normal behaviour?

Regards

Simon

[CraigV]

Could be...especially as it needs to interrogate the RAWS agent if a remote server. It's going to have to issue snapshot commands for Windows VSS, and then stream that data over the wire while compressing.

However...DON'T use AOFO with any database backups...it's going to cause issues. Symantec recommend not using AOFO when backing up DBs of any kind.