Quest Litespeed experiences

[Rudi_Wiesmayr]

Hi folks!

Please share your experiences with Quest's Litespeed for backing up your SQLServer DBs.

- Can you recommend it? To a friend?

- Why do you like it or not?

- Do you use other 3rd party backup tools?

- Do you use the option of adding file systems to the backup? (e.g. the SAP trees...)

I searched for Litespeed an only found two older threads:

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Can't imagine that that 's all...

Kind regards, Rudi

[Former Member]

Hello Rudi,

We have been using Quest Litespeed on our Production SAP systems for the last 2 years. We are very happy with the software since it shortens the backup time for our ~1 TB databases to 8 hours average.

Since I am the SQL Server DBA as well as the Basis Administrator for our company, I had done extensive testing for this product before we bought it. I would definitely recommend it.

I especially like the encryption feature and the selective object recovery feature (such as recovering one single database object from a full database backup).

In addition to LiteSpeed, we use our SAN storage back-end snapshots (NetApp SAN is used) as well. However, the SAN snapshots neither provide a point-in-time recovery nor selective object recovery.

LiteSpeed's encryption feature is great if your company is bound by the Sarbanes-Oxley operating principles and record-keeping procedures.

I recommend LiteSpeed, I like it.

[Former Member]

Hi,

Yes, I agree with Ugur's previous post. We have also been using Quest Litespeed to backup (and restore) our SAP R/3/BI/EP/MS SQL landscape for the last two years and have been very pleased with the results.

Our 4TB R/3 Production System is backed up to disk in ~ 4 hours via Litespeed and the dump files are only around 500GB due to the Litespeed compression. This creates a massive saving in terms of disk (and tape) capacity required to store backups and makes the cost-avoidance business case an easy one to write and understand.

We last performed a database restore of this backup in September when the database was ~3.6TB and this took 13.6 hours - another big improvement on native SQL (pre- 2008?).

Another cool feature is single-click restore which allows you to back a system up to a single executable restore file which can be transferred to a server (with/without Litespeed installed) and used to restore the database. We use this feature for copying to smaller systems.

As Sven notes, backup compression will be included in the native MS SQL 2008 product, however, we haven't evaluated this yet so not sure how it will perform in practice? Depending on your timeline though it may be prudent to wait before purchasing Litespeed.

Thanks,

Chris

[Former Member]

Hi Rudi,

depending on your needs (encryption, compression, ...), Litespeed could be a good solution for you. We have tested and evaluated Litespeed. The results were really good. In our case the focus was on backup compression. When we compared Litespeed with Backup Compression of SQL Server 2008 we came to the conclusion that we will wait for SQL Server 2008! The compression ratio was in a realistic scenario almost the same (difference less than 2%).

Regards,

Sven

[former_member193399]

Rudi,

Quest LiteSpeed is really good. Their compression algorithm and encryption is not based on the default encryption which comes with the windows operating system. Also it supports other products such as oracle. It is heavy on the price when compared to other similar products specific to SQL Server.

I personally have not used this product, but heard talking from other trusted DBA in our local user group meetings who have used it for several years without any issues.

-RT