Backing up when your ISP won't let you run backups

The situation

Your SQL Server is configured to require you to have high-level permissions (such as administrator) when you run backups on a remote server. However, you are using a hosted server, and the Internet Service Provider (ISP) won't grant you those permissions.

Key challenges

• Backing up your databases that are on a remote server when you have low-level permissions (such as read-only).

How we can solve it

1. Use SQL Packager to package the database on the remote server as a .NET executable or C# project.
   SQL Packager requires only read-only permission to back up the database.
2. Run the package to create an exact copy of the remote database on a local computer.

Benefits of our solution

• You can back up your remote server databases even when your ISP won't grant you administrator permission on the server.
• SQL Packager™ offers you a number of additional benefits; for example, you can re-create a database to a different name, or run it on a different version of SQL Server (including the free MSDE), and you can compress the package.

Support & documentation

• Worked example: Packaging a database as a .NET executable