A Misfire in Backup Compression Shootout?

Letters to the Editor

All opinions expressed in this letter are those of Idera and do not reflect the opinions of SQL Server Magazine or Penton Media. No responsibility is accepted by Penton Media for the accuracy of any statements, opinions, or advice contained in this letter, and readers should rely upon their own enquiries when making any decisions affecting their own interests.

A Misfire in the Shootout?

The April edition of SQL Server Magazine contained a comparative review [“SQL Server Backup Compression Shootout,” April 2008, InstantDoc ID 98180] of three backup and recovery products for SQL Server from HyperBac, Red Gate, and Idera. At Idera, we respect and appreciate the integrity of your publication and the technical abilities of your review team; however, in this particular review, we believe the results to be misleading. The Idera SQLsafe backup and recovery product provides a powerful feature set addressing performance, manageability, and scalability. These features do not appear to have been effectively exercised and reviewed consistently across the three products.

Idera SQLsafe is a powerful backup and recovery system for SQL Server that provides considerably more than just backup compression. It is designed to automate, manage, and audit backup and recovery operations across tens or hundreds of servers often performing millions of backups per year. Had we more clearly understood the criteria and goals of the review, we would have submitted the free edition of our SQLsafe product, which has a footprint and functionality set more comparable to Red Gate and HyperBac.

Given the above, we would ask your readers to review our more detailed response in the online edition of the article and then download the products and try them out for themselves in their own environment, the true test of any product.

—Heather Sullivan, product manager, Idera