Microsoft SQL Server support

SQL Backup supports the following versions of Microsoft SQL Server:

• SQL Server 2008 R2 (32-bit, 64-bit, and Itanium)
• SQL Server 2008 (32-bit, 64-bit, and Itanium) - Service Pack 1 is supported but not required.
• SQL Server 2005 (32-bit, 64-bit, and Itanium) - Service Packs 1, 2 and 3 are supported but not required.
• SQL Server 2000 (32-bit, 64-bit, and Itanium) - Service Pack 3a or later is required.

The following editions of each version are supported:

• Developer Edition
• Enterprise Edition
• Standard Edition
• Web Edition
• Workgroup Edition

SQL Backup provides limited support for SQL Server Express Edition; the SQL Backup graphical user interface does not support scheduled backup jobs, scheduled restore jobs or log shipping with this edition.

Microsoft Windows support

SQL Backup supports the following Microsoft Windows operating systems:

• Windows 7
• Windows Vista Service Packs 1 and 2
• Windows Server 2008 R2
• Windows Server 2008 Service Packs 1 and 2 (Standard Edition and Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition)
• Windows XP Professional Service Packs 1, 2 and 3
• Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition and Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition:For 32-bit versions of Windows, Service Pack 1 and Service Pack 2 are supported but not required.For 64-bit versions of Windows, Service Pack 1 is required. You must install this separately for Itanium; for x64 it is installed automatically. Service Pack 2 is supported but not required.
• Windows 2000 Professional Service Pack 4
• Windows 2000 Server Service Pack 4
• Windows 2000 Advanced Server Service Pack 4

Operating system requirements

• 512MB RAM
• 100MB hard disk space

.NET framework requirements

The graphical user interface requires Microsoft .NET version 2, 3.0 or 3.5.

Platform support for x86 64-bit and x86 32-bit

If you run 32-bit and 64-bit machines, note these platform support details:

• The SQL Backup GUI is a .NET 2.0 Windows Forms application, compiled to run in 32-bit mode only. There should be no performance degradation caused by this limitation on x86 64-bit machines.
• The SQL Backup Agent service is a native 32-bit process. It cannot be run in 64-bit mode. This should not degrade performance on an x86 64-bit machine.
• SQL Backup's extended stored procedures are available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Use the 32-bit versions with 32-bit versions of SQL Server, the 64-bit versions with 64-bit versions of SQL Server.
• SQL Backup's command line tools are all 32-bit processes. They cannot be run in 64-bit mode. This should not degrade performance on an x86 64-bit machine.

Technical notes

• SQL Backup does not support cumulative backups in a single file.
• SQL Backup fully supports FILESTREAM storage introduced in SQL Server 2008.
• To restore from a backup file that was created with SQL Backup 6 or later to a SQL Server instance running SQL Backup 5, you must first convert the backup file.