I had a customer recently reach out to ask if SQL Clone would work with 20 backup files. I decided to test this.
This is part of a series of posts on SQL Clone, which is a virtualization product from Redgate Software.
The Scenario
A customer asked about SQL Clone working with a lot of backup files (striped), like 20. Our support org said this should work and handle the max number of files, which is 64 for the backup command.
I know SQL Clone works with striped backups because I wrote an article on it, but I only tested 7 files. How to test more than that?
First, get the backups. To do this, I used a GenAI to quickly get me a command. Once I had this, I ran it and got a lot of files.
Now to get the SQL Clone image.
Image Creation
I decided to start with the GUI. This has changed since I wrote the article in that it now puts each file in a separate text box. By default you get two. I pasted in my file path and file, and then copy/pasted in the 2nd box. I continued adding them, clicking the “Add another file” at the bottom each time (see the image).
It was tedious, but it was a quick way of testing this. I likely would have taken longer than the 3-4 minutes of copy/pasting to write a PoSh script (though I need to do that). You can see most of my files below.
Once I had 32 of them, I clicked “Continue” and entered the name and location for my image. Then clicked “Create”.
It worked. The image shows my SQL Clone image being created successfully and a clone from this image.
These were small files, so the restore time was quick. Each is about 3MB, so we’re not looking at much.
Summary
This shows that SQL Clone can work with 32 files. I assume it works with 64, but that will have to wait until I have time to mess around with the PoSh to make the image command creation easy.
If you are looking to save storage space for multiple copies of databases, or give each user a consistent copy in seconds, check out SQL Clone.
Video Walkthrough
See this article in video below.