SQL Virtual Restore 2.3

Testimonials

See what Matt has to say

Video testimonial of Matt, a Junior DBA, taken at DevConnections 2012

I downloaded the trial version of SQL Virtual Restore on the recommendation of one of my external contractors. My developer had an urgent need to restore a complex stored procedure which was key to our web applications operation. The normal option for restoring a component within a database is to request restoration of the backup from our external database support company (due to strict change management procedures). This can sometimes take several days and then there is an issue of which server has the most space available that won't be impacted during business hours. As I had access to the backup file from the database, my contractor suggested I use SQL Virtual Restore and restore the backup onto my local PC. Less than 30 minutes later I had installed SQL Virtual Restore, retrieved the stored procedure and restored functionality to the web application with zero impact to our production server environment.

SQL Virtual Restore has proved its worth many times since then. I now use it within our change management process to verify backups of databases prior to my team of developers implementing any changes. This ensures that not only do I have backups of my databases but that they are complete and restorable should a rollback be necessary. It also confirms our backups for disaster recovery and management purposes. It's a brilliant tool that saves time, money and valuable SAN space! I wouldn't be without it now.

I Harris – Team Leader Enterprise Architecture Support, DFEEST (SA Govt)

Compared to a physical/native restore, virtually restoring a database using SQL Virtual Restore is really fast. Physically restoring a 40GB database takes around 10 to 15 minutes in my environment, whereas it takes less than a minute to do a restore with SQL Virtual Restore. I would strongly recommend this tool for all those who have huge database sizes.

R.Raja Jegan, Expert at Expert-Exchange.com

At Kiwibank, we have all of our SQL backups sitting on a file share, and as part of the server that hosts the file share, we have SQL Server with SQL Virtual Restore installed. We find occasions where someone has deleted data accidentally or dropped an index etc., and with SQL Virtual Restore we can mount last night's backup quickly and easily to get access to the data or the original schema. It even works with all our backups being encrypted. This takes any extra load off our production server. SQL Virtual Restore is a great product.

Brent McCracken, Senior Database Administrator/Architect, Kiwibank Limited

What does it do? In short: when you restore a backup, it makes SQL think it is really restoring it, but without SQL knowing it, it is creating its own files with some limited information in it. The data itself remains in the backup-file. So instead of creating (BIG) lfd, mdf, ndf-files, it creates small vldf,vmdf,vndf-files. And it does that quite fast. ...your database is fully operational. You can read from it, you can write (!) to it, you can make another backup of it.

Alain Krikilion, Kriki's Dynamics NAV Blog

If you find yourself frequently copying backups across the network and restore them on UAT and/or DEV servers in order to provide a production-like environment for developers and/or testers, even if you have this process automated, SQL Virtual Restore is definitely worth having a real close look at. It can cut down the time until such an environment is ready to use dramatically and can save precious network resources, which is a Win-win situation for everyone.

Frank Kalis, DBA and Microsoft MVP, SQL Server Performance

SQL Virtual Restore offers several important benefits to DBAs that a standard restore can't provide: substantial space savings and substantial restore time savings.

Brad McGehee, Director of DBA Education, Red Gate Software