Backup using GZIP

I'm sure I'm not the only one in this situation: out of disk space on
the backup drive, no other drives available, no money for new drives,
no money for software.
I'd really like to use LiteSpeed or SQLZIP, but no $$$ in the budget
with the fiscal year ending and our fuel costs consuming all revenue.
I've seen some hints of using GZIP to compress the backups using named
pipes. I can get the backup to work manually by startiing the restore
going to a command prompt and issuing the gzip command based on this
link:
http://spaces.msn.com/jcarlossaez/blog/cns!B3378F057444B65C!107.entry?_c11_blogpart_blogpart=blogview&_c=blogpart#permalink
I can't get the restore to work properly, although I can manually
uncompress the file and the restore works fine (the gunzip statement
can't locate the pipe).
Is anyone using something like this that is an automated job?
Anyone see any problems/issues with using gzip to compress the backup
files?
Thanks,
BillSQL Backup from RedGate is only like $300 per server.
<Disclosure>No connection with them (they did once give me a free pass to VS
Live, but that was after I was a satisfied customer).</Disclosure>
--
David Lundell
Principal Consultant and Trainer
www.MutuallyBeneficial.com
David@.MutuallyBeneficial.com
"PSPDBA" <DissendiumDBA@.gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1148653651.258474.50350@.38g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> I'm sure I'm not the only one in this situation: out of disk space on
> the backup drive, no other drives available, no money for new drives,
> no money for software.
> I'd really like to use LiteSpeed or SQLZIP, but no $$$ in the budget
> with the fiscal year ending and our fuel costs consuming all revenue.
> I've seen some hints of using GZIP to compress the backups using named
> pipes. I can get the backup to work manually by startiing the restore
> going to a command prompt and issuing the gzip command based on this
> link:
> http://spaces.msn.com/jcarlossaez/blog/cns!B3378F057444B65C!107.entry?_c11_blogpart_blogpart=blogview&_c=blogpart#permalink
> I can't get the restore to work properly, although I can manually
> uncompress the file and the restore works fine (the gunzip statement
> can't locate the pipe).
> Is anyone using something like this that is an automated job?
> Anyone see any problems/issues with using gzip to compress the backup
> files?
> Thanks,
> Bill
>|||You've never worked for the government. When I say there's no money -
there's really no money. I can barely get them to buy paper for the
printer.|||Hmmmm...that is a bummer. Are there any old backup files on the HD that you
can delete? Can you truncate any old static reporting tables or any load
tables that are no longer being used within the database? Any large files
or applications on the server that are no longer needed that can be removed?
Perhaps backup locally then automatically copy the backup files to a
different system with more space? Or backup to a different system
altogether using UNC?
Just a couple of ideas.
HTH
Jerry
"PSPDBA" <DissendiumDBA@.gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1148655353.974446.11690@.i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> You've never worked for the government. When I say there's no money -
> there's really no money. I can barely get them to buy paper for the
> printer.
>|||No space anywhere - this is just a DB server so there aren't any other
applications on it. The backups have their own drive, it's just not
big enough. We're barely storing a days worth of data. I'm fighting
for space on a SAN, but not making much headway because of the location
of the server. We have some servers opening up in two or three months,
but I need to do something within the next couple of days.