SQL Server Backup and Restore - Simple Talk

Chapter 2: Planning, Storage and Documentation
• third-party backup tools – many third-party vendors offer powerful, highly
configurable backup tools that offer backup compression and encryption, as well
as well-designed interfaces for ease of scheduling and monitoring.
All environments are different and the choice you make must be dictated by your specific
needs. The goal is to get your databases backed up, so whichever one you decide on and
use consistently is going to be the right choice.
Maintenance plan backups
The Maintenance Plan Wizard and Designer is a built-in SQL Server tool that allows
DBAs to automate the task of capturing full and differential database backups, and log
backups. It can also be used to define and schedule other essential database maintenance
tasks, such as index reorganization, consistency checks, statistics updates, and so on.
I list this tool first, not because it is the best way to automate these tasks, but because it is
a simple-to-use, built-in option, and because scheduling backup and other maintenance
tasks this way sure is better than not scheduling them at all!
In fact, however, from a SQL Server backup perspective, maintenance plans are the
weakest choice of the three we'll discuss, for the following reasons:
• backup options are limited – file or partial backups are not supported
• configurability is limited – we are offered a strict set of options in configuring the
backup task and we cannot make any other modifications to the process, although it's
possible (via the designer) to include some pre- and post-backup logic
• some important tasks are not supported – such as proper backup verification
(see later in the chapter).
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