Compressible Backups

Compressible backups are encrypted backups that can be further compressed using third-party packers like WinZip, 7z etc.

This is especially useful for SQL Server Express users, as it lacks built-in backup compression. If you're using a SQL Server edition that supports backup compression, we recommend using that instead- it runs faster and achieves better compression.

As you may know, random or already compressed data doesn't compress well. For example, if you use Microsoft TDE, enabling backup compression would only waste resources. DbDefence, however, can apply compression before encryption, which allows users to benefit from compressible backups even for encrypted databases.

• Compressible backups affects only encrypted databases
• This feature was introduced in DbDefence starting from version 10.1
• Previous versions of DbDefence can't restore compressible backups

Setup

To set up compressible backup globally set dbd_compressible_backup to 1 in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ActivecryptSoftware\DbDefence\options

Backup

The started backup will use the updated settings. No changes are needed in the backup command line - everything is handled transparently. To improve the backup speed, you can increase the transfer size to the maximum using the MAXTRANSFERSIZE parameter in the BACKUP command:

BACKUP DATABASE [test] to DISK = N'test.bak' WITH  NOUNLOAD, 
INIT,FORMAT, MAXTRANSFERSIZE= 4194304

Restore

There is nothing special to setup. Everything is handled transparently.