Getting started

SQL Backup™ enables you to create smaller, faster, more robust and reliable backups of Microsoft® SQL Server™ databases, much more quickly than you can create native backup files.

With SQL Backup's compression, your backup files are usually 50% to 95% smaller than native SQL Server backups. You can also encrypt your backup files using 128- or 256-bit key Advanced Encryption Standard encryption. The network resilience feature in the Pro edition enables backup and log shipping activities to resume automatically if they are interrupted by a network outage. SQL Backup also features an interactive time line for quick access to a graphical overview of completed backup and restore activities, and jobs scheduled for the future. SQL Backup Pro works with remote SQL Servers and SQL Server clusters.

SQL Backup is compatible with SQL Server 2008, 2005 and 2000.

You can use SQL Backup to:

• back up multiple databases and transaction logs (and set up scheduled backup jobs)
• restore multiple backups
• set up scheduled transaction log shipping
• generate automatic email notification when the backup or restore operation is completed, or if errors have occurred during the process
• provide extra resilience against network outages for backups and log shipping
• back up and restore databases from the command line interface
• run SQL Backup processes while you are connected to the database server remotely using an application such as Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio, or connectivity tools such as ADO, OLEDB, ODBC
• recover individual objects from a SQL Backup file with SQL Object Level Recovery Pro
• generate Microsoft Tape Format (MTF) files from SQL Backup files

Technical notes

SQL Backup Lite does not support encryption of backups. However, you can restore encrypted backups using SQL Backup Pro or SQL Backup Lite.

SQL Backup Lite does not support compression of backups using compression level 2, 3, or 4. However, you can restore any compressed backup using SQL Backup Pro or SQL Backup Lite.

SQL Backup does not support cumulative backups in a single file.

To restore a backup file that was created by SQL Backup v6, onto a SQL Server instance running SQL Backup v5, you must first convert the backup file.

Getting more information

• You can display hints for some features and options in the interface by clicking
• What's new in this version of SQL Backup?
• Find out about activating SQL Backup.
• How can I check for updates to SQL Backup?
• Find out more about Red Gate.