Performing 1 GB per Second Backups

Backup capabilities are a critical aspect of data management, and in this context, the performance of such features ultimately reflect the success of the Data Platform. On February 27, 2008, Microsoft celebrated the worldwide launch of Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and SQL Server 2008, via the Heroes Happen Here event. However, only two of the three products launched, namely Windows Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 have hit RTM ahead of February 27. SQL Server 2008 is planned to be released to manufacturing in the third quarter of this year.

The latest Data Platform from Microsoft is available at the moment only as a feature complete Community technology Preview build released last month, and available for download here. This aspect has not stopped the Redmond company from applauding the backup capabilities of SQL Server 2008, touting speeds of 1GB per second via Backup Compression.

"You could either use 'With Compression' along with the 'Backup' command or simply enable default backup compression through sp_configure by setting ‘backup compression default’ value to 1. It is very convenient for backups of large databases in our customer lab environment," revealed Lindsey Allen, the manager of the SQLCAT Best Practice and Customer Lab team, and Thomas Grohser, Senior Database Engineer, in a post on the Microsoft SQL Server Development Customer Advisory Team blog.

The Redmond company tested two databases, one weighing in at 1.27TB with 12 database files, while the second database featured 2.95TB of data with 76 database files. In both scenarios, the backup process ran at speeds larger than 1 GB per second, and going as high as 1,424 MB per second. The 1.27TB Database was backed up in 20 minutes and generated a backup of just 320GB, while the 2.95TB Database took a little over 34 minutes for a 482GB backup.

"Backup operation is IO intensive. Backup compression writes less pages to disk comparing to uncompressed backup, as long as you system is not bottlenecked on CPU, backup compression should executes faster than backup without compression. Hope you will enjoy this new SQL feature and getting even better backup performance," Allen added.

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