Uranium Backup 7.5.0.3200

3 Comments

1. Well, not bad for openers. If it’s just for an occasional backup that you perform from time to time it may do the trick. However for a serious use with a regular backup operation of databases from mid to large when we are taking about business procedures I’d recommend looking to Scriptlogic’s Litespeed http://scriptlogic.com/products/litespeed/ . First off I like that Scriptlogic’s tools implement a granular configuration that allows you fine-tune compression settings based on more than a dozen compression levels. That’s even more important because you can do that even on SQL server 2005! But it’s strongest part I think is security that you can set to be applied for any database you backup selecting from several encryption algorithms implemented in the tool. For a corporate use it has a very nice feature allowing you to create a self-extracting databases archive and store in on remote place. So if you have to hand it the database to another person such as another admin in a remote office in your company you or a person in working in another company you can just upload the database file to this person and he/she will be able to restore it to its server without needing to have Litespeed installed in his/her environment. What’ s also great in the tool is of course its GUI. It has one of the best backup procedure implementations that I’ve seen implemented among various backup tools. The magic is in a double-configuration scheme implemented with the tool. You can configure its settings using its step-by-step wizards so you don’t have to be a SQL wizard to be able to create a database backup. Or you can select a quick method allowing to configure backup settings right in a single point. It supports various backup devices types including even Tivoli Storage Manager which is of a great use for a corporate tasks. And it has a fantastic database backup tracking that allows you to quickly revise backup state based on the database colourings showing which databases were backed up and which demand backing up. When we are talking about compression we immediately start dealing with CPU load. And multicore CPUs that we have nowadays that’s important to effectively balance the load using multithreading and thread distributions via cores using affinity tuning. That all I can quickly configure via Litespeed. Moreover I can create different settings for various databases thus creating dedicated backup plans allowing me effectively distribute server resources across backup jobs.

2. I’m using it not only for occasional backup. We installed it to all our customers, and it works perfectly even for big databases. Like litespeed, it has zip compression and encryption (AES 256 bit). It does not require sql server components, it is fully portable and incredibly small and lightweight. And I can restore databases also with microsoft tools. Last but not least, it is cheap !

3. Well, this is without any doubt the best backup tool I’ve ever tried. Uranium is small, is not intrusive, is fast and is robust. I used it for a long time to make some backups of my personal photos, then we decided to use it also in our company for some specific backup tasks. My boss was very impressed when I showed him Uranium. Probably the most important features of this program is the flexibility: you can make practically any kind of backup and you have a so large number of options that you can really make everything. Our SQL server databases now are backupped with uranium (we have a server farm with many websites and databases hosted) with extreme ease and without any problem. There are some fantastic features that other backup program doesn’t have, it never fails and the load for the server is practically equal to zero. Finally, it is the best choice to substitute ntbackup for operating systems that haven’t this program anymore, like server 2008, vista and windows 7. In fact Uranium can be used also to make tape backups, and also for this kind of backup it is probably the most robust and reliable program, but very very cheaper than some other well-known applications. The company that made Uranium made a great work.