Thanks for the stats on ZIPped MS-SQL db files - that has saved me doing some tests!
I will eventually have to backup MS_SQL servers on 31 sites to a number of remote locations and so I am currently experimenting with a number of strategies. At the moment, I am backing up as follows: 1) A nightly scheduled batch file runs SQL scripts to dump the tables by calling a stored procedure Backups are called backup_tablename_dayofweek.bak (eg: backup_testdb_wed.bak) 2) The .bak file is renamed to backup_tablename.bak to create a daily generic backup file which is synced off-site by BackupPC 3) The .bak file is ZIPped to !B_tablename_dayofweek.zip (eg: !B_testdb_Wed.zip) and this is left in the backup folder as a local copy. BackupPC is set to ignore files that start !B* so these files are not copied offsite but are kept for a week until overwritten. It's not easy to determine actual backup speed and performance yet because we have only rolled out the new app on two sites, and the devs are messing around with the database schema so a lot of the data in the .bak file is changing between backups. During initial testing (when things were not being changed so much), a daily sync of a 700MB database was taking around 20-40 minutes, albeit across an old 512K ADSL (VPN) line with an upload speed of 288Kbit/sec. I have just upgraded this to an LLU service that's currently running at 5.5Mbit down, 883Kbit up and will be seeing what improvement this gives. Our 700MB .bak files ZIP down to around 130MB and I was wondering whether it would be worth taking this offsite, but it may be that syncing the raw dumps may be quicker. Nigel ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 30-Day trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus on what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with Crystal Reports now. http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july _______________________________________________ BackupPC-users mailing list BackupPC-users@lists.sourceforge.net List: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users Wiki: http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/