March 21, 2007 at 11:52 am
What type of compression does LiteSpeed use? I want to give their product a try as it would cut the cost of our backup solution by at least one half. However I do not want to be stuck having to use LiteSpeed to restore a database. If the compression was a standard zip or rar then I could uncompress the backup using winrar and load on a different server if needed. Thanks for the help everyone.
March 21, 2007 at 12:06 pm
Hello,
The algorithm being used by LiteSpeed is different from the standard zip / rar format. You need to install the LiteSpeed per system even thought it might have number of instances.
Hope this helps you to decide to go ahead with LiteSpeed.
Thanks
Lucky
March 21, 2007 at 12:19 pm
I tested LiteSpeed before settling on SQLSafe. If I remember correctly LiteSpeed uses a proprietary compression algorithm just like every one else so you will need the tool to restore.
Now for the good news. I have been using SQLSafe for quite a while and have not found the restore function to be all that burdensome. I trained my backup DBA in the use of the tool and he has had no problems. Moving databases between tables is still an issue. Perhaps LiteSpeed has a better way of doing so than SQLSafe. I did not test that process.
I guess the good out weighed the bad. I think you would be happy with either tool. I know this did not exactly answer your question but thought it might be helpful.
Good Luck
March 21, 2007 at 12:54 pm
We're using LiteSpeed quite successfully. I believe it's delivered with a tool that will uncompress a compressed backup so it can be restored through a normal restore process.
March 21, 2007 at 2:08 pm
We've used Litespeed here for years, though now moved to Red Gate's SQLBackup for obvious reasons.
Litespeed works well. A little pricey, so compare the value with other tools (SQL Backup, SQL Safe, etc), and it compresses at various levels (I think we had 3 settings here) using various amounts of CPU. We tended to balance things at the middle level.
Restores can be done using the litespeed procs or they have a utility that will uncompress the backup into a native backup format so you can use SQL Server tools. We used to keep a copy of the extractor program on every server and periodically "touch" the file so backup programs would grab a copy.
The big thing to be careful of is using encryption. Be sure you keep track of previous passwords in case you need to restore an old backup.
March 21, 2007 at 9:08 pm
Before choosing litespeed take a look at Idera and Red Gate's products as well. The litespeed product is priced per processor (unless they've changed recently) where the others are priced per server... all three are nice products, unless you've got a need for some of the more "enterprise" ready features of litespeed I'd consider the others as well.
Joe
March 22, 2007 at 3:22 am
Hi, in the past I use LiteSpeed to backup up large archive databases. Never got the GUI to work mind you, despite talking to their Tech Support. Currently I am evaluating SQL Backup, SonSafe and MS for Log Shipping. But I really expect to go with my own bespoke as for ''normal'' databases I see no real gain when you take into account support and cost versus speed against the bespoke. Anyway below is an FYI ...
EXEC master.dbo.xp_restore_database @database='DOC01ARCHIVE_24082005'
, @filename = '\\gtlidbarc\g$\Dumps\GTLIARC1\Doc01Archive_Level0\Doc01Archive_Level0_200508242000.BAK'
, @with = 'MOVE "Doc01Archive_Current_Data" TO "G:\mssqldoc01\mssql\MSSQL\Data\DOC01ARCHIVE_LEVELX_Data.MDF"'
, @with = 'MOVE "Doc01Archive_Current_Log" TO "G:\mssqldoc01\mssql\MSSQL\Data\DOC01ARCHIVE_LEVELX_Log.LDF"'
EXEC master.dbo.xp_restore_filelistonly @filename = '\\gtlidbarc\g$\Dumps\GTLIARC1\Doc01Archive_Level0\Doc01Archive_Level0_200508242000.BAK'
March 23, 2007 at 10:01 am
An important point is that while the file format is proprietary, there are two ways to restore them on other servers without installing more copies of LiteSpeed. There is an extractor program that converts the compressed backups into normal files that can be restored by the regular SQL Server RESTORE commands. It doesn't do the restore, it just extracts the backup files, but it is a stand-alone executable that will run on a computer that doesn't have LiteSpeed (or SQL Server for that matter) installed.
You also have the option of creating "Double-Click Restore" (i.e. self-extracting) backup files. This creates an .exe file rather than a .bak, so you can copy it to another server (without LiteSpeed) and run it to perform the restore. The destination server must be the same version of SQL and OS however, you can't restore Itanium or x64 backups on a 32-bit system.
When comparing LiteSpeed to the alternatives you may want look at the entire feature set, such as log shipping, object-level restore, and support for multithreading. Not every product is as well-rounded. There could be a reason it is more expensive, they may not just be relying on a lot of gullible sysadmins.
A feature I wish somebody would provide is support for staged backups (as I call them). I run striped backups to local disks on my server, to get them finished as quickly as possible to reduce the impact on other operations. Then I move the files to a network share where they are written to tape and then deleted after a few days. I have found local backup followed by a file copy (with or without LiteSpeed) runs faster and more reliably than backup over the network. I also modify the backup history tables in msdb to make it look like they were backed up to the network share in the first place, so if I want to do a restore it knows where to find the files. I have to script the whole process manually because nothing supports it, but it works so well I keep hoping some vendor will figure out how to put this kind of flexibility in their GUI.
March 23, 2007 at 11:30 am
Thank you all that replied. I currently have a few older servers running SQL 2000 but one in particular that has a 36gig drive. The OS is windows 2000 sp2 and SQL is 2000 sp2 (I know I need to get the OS at least to sp4 but the server is a mission critical 24/7 box). The database is approaching 10gigs with the log file being some what of a space pig in that it grows by about 2gigs per 24 hours. To further complicate things any attempt to copy a 2gig file over the network results in an estimated time of ~1300 minutes, something is not right there!!! I’m currently working with the production line to inform me when a window of an hour becomes available so I can perform some software upgrades. I tried to install the Red Gate product but it dies about a second into the install. I hate to run winrar on the box because it pegs my CPU use at 100% and is taking over 2 hours to compress the 10gig db.
The database model was set to Full and they were doing a tape backup (yes it has a tape drive connected). Last weekend in the middle of the night I got the call…
It turns out the drive was full and the log file was approaching 16gigs. I deleted a couple old backups and then I changed the DB model to simple until I can come up with a solution. The tape drive may have issues since it has been a hit and miss for the past month, 4mm dats are know for their fantastic longevity (sarcasm there).
Any ideas? I would love to get a copy of your script if you are willing to share, I was thinking along the same lines until the network copy took so long.
BC
March 23, 2007 at 1:46 pm
I tried posting the script but the Confirm Submission function wouldn't work. I have emailed it to the article email address, maybe someone there can get it taken care of. If you don't see it after a while, send me a private email and I can send it to you.
SQL LiteSpeed (and possibly competitors) does try to throttle the compression so the server is not brought to its knees. I don't know for sure that it does it better than winzip or winrar or anything else, but it is designed to minimize the impact. You can control the CPU load with any of these products by choosing a lower compression level. You should see a lot of compression (depending on your data) without pegging the CPU at the lower levels, while trying to get the files 5% or 10% smaller may kill it.
December 19, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Hi, I realize this is an old thread. I also have/am using litespeed. But we aren't buying anymore licenses. We've switched to Idera's SQLSafe.
When we installed litespeed and tried to convert maintenance plans, the jobs for backups worked, but everyone for updating statistics and rebuilding or defragging indexes would not work. We tried to create those index and statistics maintenance plans in litespeed and the jobs wouldn't work. We had this happen on 3 servers.
I sent litespeed support with the documentation of what we did. They made us do the same things again. Their solution was to upgrade to their new version. This had the same problem and when we tried something the support guy didn't even know the product. Our solution was to create
the index and statistics jobs in SQL Server.
The point is their product doesn't work as advertised and we were very disappointed the tech support. 🙁
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