Litespeed & RedGate backup pro,which is better ?
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Hi,
Anyone have done a comparsion of the SQL server 2000 backup tool from
Quest litespeed 2005 and Red-Gate backup pro 4 ? I am evaluating both
of them now. My main objectives is to have a good solid tool with lot
of features and able to reduce the time/space to backup/restore and
yet support the filegroup feature which allow a database to have multiple individual
database file.
Please kindly feedback their pro/con of both product.
Thank you
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Since you are looking for SQL backup products that compress data, take a look at Idera's SQLsafe as well.
Pat Mong -
There is an article on this site on 12/07/2004 that compares four backup products and includes the two you asked about.
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You may also want to compare restore times. I've tested LiteSpeed and the backup speed was great and so was the compression, but the restore took longer than a native SQL Server one (on a very large database). I haven't tested Red Gate yet though.
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We use Litespeed and I'm pretty happy with it generally, good compression on backups, although like the previous poster I'm a bit disapointed with some of the restore times (although it seemt to ok on smaller DB's).
The problems I have with Litespeed is the cost (oh...and the Windows NT style interface
). Its per processor pricing, and extra costs for 64-bit support, so it adds up. But luckily this is my managers problem not mine. So if the cost doesn't put you off Litespeed is pretty good. I got an email from Red Gate about their new backup tool. I haven't tested it yet either, but will probably run some comparissons just to see what it can do, and the price seems rather good (something like $500 per server) - though we will probably stick with Litespeed for the timebeing, as it's already installed, and does the job.
Jake
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As for litespeed's restore times there are several things which must be considered.
If you are restoring a database to a new database, SQL Server must first initialize the data files. This process can add substantial overhead to the restore times (whether native or litespeed). When restoring databases and comparing restore times, you should compare your times both when the database already exists and the space for it is allocated and when it does not. Also make sure that the comparisons are apples to apples meaning that the backup files and database files exist on the same disk partitions.
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I did the exact same scenarios using both applications and even tried 2 different versions of SQL Lite Speed. All of the Lite Speed restores were slower. I ended up doing 2 Lite Speed backups, 2 SQL backups, 4 Lite Speed restores, and 4 SQL restores with a 90 GB database and was not satisfied with the results--whether a file had to be created or not.
I hear that other customers get good results though....
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I'm getting the picture that people are experienced with Litspeed. I've got a few more questions for anybody out there.
1) For you Litspeed users, how has the Tech support been since they got bought out by Quest? I've heard some mixed reviews on this, but my resources for information has been extremely limited.
2) So far nobody has commented about the other 2 products -- Red-Gate's Pro edition and Idera's backup product.
I, too am in the midddle of putting together a proposal to purchase a backup software for my sql 2000 servers -- about 10 altogether. I would be very interested to hear any more feedback that people might have.
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I've been using the Idera SQLsafe product for a about 18 months. I run it on 80 SQL servers. I particularly like the ease of use, from a central console session on my workstation. It's per instance priced and Idera will work with you on quantity pricing. I can easily generate all sorts reports using Microsoft Reporting Services pulling data from a central repository. Also, their service and support folks are very good. Idera has an on-line chat-like support facility that I usually use instead of opening up a service ticket. They are on the chat session immediately, all the time. I didn't get paranoid about the exact time a backup or restore takes. SQLsafe is fast enough and the compression is very good. I go more for the long-term relationship with the company and build on that. That will always pay dividends. Good luck in your search.
Pat Mong -
I use LiteSpeed and my only complaint (other than price) is that the CPU overhead is significant. Some of my servers have ~36 db's each so I have to run 2 or 3 backups at a time. From what I can tell, the CPU overhead increased substantially when we went from version 3 to version 4. Per backup, average CPU overhead per database is about 15-20%. This becomes expensive when running 3 backups simultaneously. Also I don't like how LiteSpeed uses extended procs b/c it puts pressure on SQL's intermal memory space (memtoleave), probably only an issue on 32-bit machines. In some cases under high load I've had run a DBCC FREEPROCCACHE command to shrink the proc cache and make room for LiteSpeed to run. I've heard Idera's SQLSafe tool runs outside of the SQL memory space which is attractive to me, but it's not critical yet so mgt is not motivated to dump LiteSpeed just yet.
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I noticed that there weren’t any responses talking about Red Gate SQL Backup Pro, so I thought I would let you have some information
– I hope you don’t mind. I’m one of the testers on the SQL Backup project, so am probably a little biased towards the tool! Red Gate SQL Backup, Quest Litespeed and SQL Safe and are the three main backup tools for SQL Server. I can’t speak for the other two (I’m sure their sales guys will tell you), but we have over 1,200 companies using SQL Backup, ranging from small firms, to 1/3 of the Fortune 100, as well as several parts of the US government.
SQL Backup does support Filegroup backups (as the original post asked).
We will shortly be releasing version 4.5 which has full 64-bit capability, and we think we will have tweaked the compression algorithm to be the best in the market. The latest tests on the data from Wikipedia showed it outperformed all other tools in terms of both compression and speed.
If anyone on this forum to take part in the Beta programme for version 4.5 then please drop me an email at helen.joyce@red-gate.com and I'll send you a link to download the software when the Beta starts in 3 weeks. You can already evaluate the current version of SQL Backup (4.1) by downloading from http://www.red-gate.com.
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