SQL 2012 backup compression vs compression offered by 3rd party tools

  • I'm in charge with the backup/recovery procedure for a ~35GB database. I'm taking a daily full database backup WITH COMPRESSION. The .bak file size from the backup WITH COMPRESSION is ~8.5GB. The "plain" .bak file taken with no compression is ~27 GB in size. However my customer is not very happy with this compression ratio. Do you know a 3rd party tool which compresses more?

  • There are several tools out there from RedGate, Idera, Dell (formerly Quest), and I'm sure others. The third-party tools usually have more compression options and also often include encryption options. I only currently have access to RedGate SQLBackup and in a quick test on some small databases on SQL Server 2012 RedGate SQLBackup got about 30% better compression at its highest compression setting than native compression, but was slightly worse when on it's lowest compression setting.

  • Thank you, Jack. I'm sorry for the delay.

  • dmoldovan (11/18/2014)


    I'm in charge with the backup/recovery procedure for a ~35GB database. I'm taking a daily full database backup WITH COMPRESSION. The .bak file size from the backup WITH COMPRESSION is ~8.5GB. The "plain" .bak file taken with no compression is ~27 GB in size. However my customer is not very happy with this compression ratio. Do you know a 3rd party tool which compresses more?

    SQL Server compression will reach anything up to 90% compression, the same as 3rd party tools such as SQLBackup or Litespeed. The 3rd party tools merely offer extra features such as variable compression and combined encryption, something not availble in sql server until SQL Server 2014.

    If you're not reaching high levels of compression then check your database schema, you likely have LOB columns and these do not compress

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