SQL Server Backup and Restore - Simple Talk

Chapter 8: Database Backup and Restore with SQL Backup Pro
The first thing to notice is that the backup is executed via an extended stored procedure
called sqlbackup, which resides in the master database and utilizes some compiled
DLLs that have been installed on the server. We pass to this stored procedure a set of
parameters as a single string, which provides the configuration settings that we wish to
use for the backup operation. Some of the names of these settings are slightly different
from what we saw for native backups but, nevertheless, the script should look fairly
familiar. We see the usual BACKUP DATABASE command to signify that we are about to
backup the DatabaseForSQLBackups database. We also see the TO DISK portion and
the path to where the backup file will be stored.
The latter portion of the script sets values for some of the optimization settings that we
saw on Step 4 of the GUI wizard. These are not necessary for taking the backup, but it's
useful to know what they do.
• DISKRETRYINTERVAL – One of the network resiliency options; amount of time
in seconds SQL Backup will wait before retrying the backup operation, in the case
of a failure.
• DISKRETRYCOUNT – Another network resiliency option; number of times a backup
will be attempted in the event of a failure. Bear in mind that the more times we retry,
and the longer the retry interval, the more extended will be the backup operation.
• THREADCOUNT – Using multiple processors and multiple threads can offer a huge
performance boost when taking backups.
The only setting that could make much of a difference is the threadcount parameter,
since on powerful multi-processor machines it can spread the load of backup
compression over multiple processors.
Go ahead and run the script now and the output should look similar to that shown in
Figure 8-8.
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