LiteSpeed for SQL Server 8.9 - User Guide

Automatically selects the optimal compression level based on CPU usage or Disk IO. For more information, see Compression Methods.

You can tell Adaptive Compression to optimize backups either for size or for speed. This argument accepts one of the following values:

• Size
• Speed

Processor affinity designates specific processors to run LiteSpeed, while not allowing LiteSpeed to run on the remaining processors.

This argument accepts decimal values and hexadecimal values. If a value begins with "0x" it is interpreted as hexadecimal. A positive 64-bit integer value translates to a binary mask where a value of 1 designates the corresponding processor to be able to run the LiteSpeed process.

NOTE: 32-bit Windows is internally limited to a 32-bit mask.

For example, you need to select processors 2, 3, and 6 for use with LiteSpeed. Number the bits from the right to left. The rightmost bit represents the first processor. Set the second, third, and sixth bits to 1 and all other bits to 0. The result is binary 100110, which is decimal 38 or hexadecimal 0x26. Review the following for additional information:

Tip: Before you start tuning the CPU Throttle or Affinity parameters to adjust backup performance, try limiting the number of threads. If you decide to use an affinity value other than default, it is recommended that you limit the threading as well. You may also want to consider using Adaptive Compression to maintain backup performance. For more information, see Adaptive Compression.

Specifies the compression level for the backup. Valid values are 0 through 8. 0 bypasses the compression routines. The remaining values of 1 through 8 specify compression with increasingly aggressive computation. 2 is the default value for disk backups and 7 is the default value for cloud backups.

When choosing a compression level, it is best to try various options using your equipment and data to determine the best option for your environment. Use the Backup Analyzer to test the performance of different compression levels. For more information, see Test Optimal Backup Settings.

NOTE: If both the compression level and Adaptive Compression option are passed in, LiteSpeed will not error out and will select and use Adaptive Compression.

Creates a Double Click Restore executable. This argument accepts one of the following values:

• 1—Creates one Double-Click Restore executable file. Note the following warning: The executable may be greater than 4GB for large databases. Windows Server is unable to run executable files larger than 4GB. However, the file will be convertible/restorable by LiteSpeed file.
• 2—Creates a Double Click Restore loader in the same location. (Default)

For more information, see Double Click Restore Executables.

Specifies encryption level. Works in conjunction with the Key (K) parameter. This argument accepts one of the following values:

• 0—40-bit RC2

• 1—56 bit RC2

• 2—112 bit RC2

• 3—128 bit RC2

• 4—168 bit 3DES

• 5—128 bit RC4

• 6—128 bit AES

• 7—192 bit AES

• 8—256 bit AES

• 9—MS_AES_128

• 10—MS_AES_192

• 11—MS_AES_256

Specifies the date and time when the backup expires. LiteSpeed will not overwrite this file until expiration datetime is passed. This argument accepts one of the following formats:

• yyyy-mm-dd
• yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss

Specifies if LiteSpeed should wait and retry the read or write operation on failure. You can define retry options using the following parameters:

• DISK_RETRY_COUNT—Specifies the number of times that a specific operation will be retried on failure. The default is 4 retries, the maximum allowed setting is 1000.
• DISK_RETRY_WAIT—Specifies the number of seconds to wait immediately following a failure before retrying. The default is 15 seconds, the maximum allowed setting is 300.

NOTE: This functionality is only available for disk and cloud operations.

For more information, see Network Resilience.

Creates a log file. This argument accepts one of the following values:

• 0—Logging off.

• 1 or any odd value—Logging on. Log file is removed on success.

• 2 or any even value—Logging on.

The default output directory is C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Quest Software\LiteSpeed\SQL Server\Logs (or C:\ProgramData\Quest Software\LiteSpeed\SQL Server\Logs) (or C:\ProgramData\Quest Software\LiteSpeed\SQL Server\Logs). To log to a different directory run this utility with the following argument: --trace logpath = "path".

For more information, see Configure Logging in LiteSpeed.

Generates a map file during a backup for Object Level Recovery. This argument accepts one of the following values:

• 0—False (default)
• 1—True

Re-initializes (overwrites and replaces) the target backup files. For TSM backups, this will create the TSM object and version the backup based on the retention policy.

Specifies the priority of the LiteSpeed process compared to other processes running on the same server. This argument accepts one of the following values:

• -1—Below Normal

• 0—Normal (Default)

• 1—AboveNormal

• 2—High

Specifies a number of days to retain the backup. LiteSpeed will not overwrite this file for this number of days. 

Displays the syntax summary of the LiteSpeed command-line utility.

Location and name of the source backup/restore file device(s). You can also specify a UNC path.

For TSM backups and TSM archives, this argument accepts the following formats:

• tsmbkp:<filespace>\<high>\<low>
• tsmarc:<filespace>\<high>\<low>

For more information, see Examples.

Tip: Multiple -E parameters are used for stripe files (Example 2). Converting multiple files to a single file is accomplished by running the commands more than once (Example 3).

Specifies the particular backup to use when recasting, restoring, extracting or reading from files with multiple appended backups. You can run xp_restore_headeronly to query the files contained within the backup set given by backup_file_name.

Password/key used to decrypt backup. Passwords are case-sensitive.

Initializes the media on the device. This argument only applies to tape backups. This argument accepts one of the following values:

• 0—Do not format (default)

• 1—Write new header

• 2—Long erase / write new header

• 3—Low level controller format / write new header

NOTE: Any successful format operation (values 1, 2, and 3; not all are available to all drive types) lays down a LiteSpeed tape header that will identify this tape as containing LiteSpeed backups. Using @init=1 (or -I in the command line) will not lay down a tape header.

Applies only to backing up and restoring tape. This argument accepts one of the following values:

• 0—Leave the tape unwound (default)

• 1—Rewind the tape after writing/reading

Applies to tape backups and restores. This argument accepts one of the following values:

• 0—Keep tape loaded (default)

• 1—Unload and eject tape from the drive after operation

Specifies a temporary directory for use with Object Level Recovery. Use this argument when the default Windows temp directory does not have enough free disk space for the restore process.

Location and name of the target backup/restore file device(s). You can supply multiple instances of this argument.

Examples:

UNC Path: \\servername\share\path\filename

Local path: c:\filedirectory\filename 

NOTE: You cannot use the same location for the source and target files if you want to recast files with the same names.

Specifies the maximum CPU usage allowed. The argument accepts an integer value between 1 and 100. The default value is 100. This is the percentage of the total amount of CPU usage (across all enabled processors) available.

TIP: Before you start tuning the CPU Throttle or Affinity parameters to adjust backup performance, try limiting the number of threads. If you decide to use an affinity value other than default, it is recommended that you limit the threading as well. You may also want to consider using Adaptive Compression to maintain backup performance. For more information, see Adaptive Compression.

Specifies the TSM server LiteSpeed connects to during backups and restores. Not required, if specified in the options file or if backing up with the Passwordaccess Generate option.

Specifies the TSM client owner user password. Not required, if specified in the options file or if backing up with the Passwordaccess Generate option.

DSMI_DIR path if needed.

DSMI_LOG path.

Defines the TSM filespace, high level and low level. This argument accepts the following format:

tsm_filespace\tsm_high_level\tsm_low_level

where:

• tsm_filespace - is the logical space on the TSM server that contains a group of files. It can be the drive label name or UNC name.

• tsm_high_level - specifies the directory path in which the file belongs.

• tsm_low_level - specifies the actual name of the file.

NOTE: You may only store one item at the location specified by this argument. It is not possible to append an object to this location. You can use the -I command-line argument or @init to back up to a non-unique location.

Log name.

Specifies the TSM management class. If not specified, LiteSpeed uses the default management class.

Displays the syntax summary of the LiteSpeed command-line utility.

Specifies the TSM server LiteSpeed connects to during backups and restores. Not required, if specified in the options file or if backing up with the Passwordaccess Generate option.

Specify the location and name of the Microsoft Tape Format (MSTF) base file.

The extractor utility will create one backup device file for each thread used in a LiteSpeed backup.

The extracted files containing the native SQL Server backup will have the following format: base_file_namex.

Where:

• base_file_name is the specified Microsoft Tape Format base file.

• x is a number or letter that represents the sequence of the files. In case there are no additional files, the base file will not have an x appended to its name.

NOTES:

• You can specify a network destination for this parameter.
• You only need to specify this parameter once. The extraction utility will create all the necessary files automatically.
• You cannot tell the extraction utility to extract a different number of native SQL Server files. However, you can specify different destinations for the extracted files by supplying a file name with the -E parameter for each of the native SQL Server files. To see how many files extractor.exe will create, run it without this parameter. See example 4 for more information.
• If a full path is not specified, the extracted files will be created in the current directory.

The name of the LiteSpeed backup device file to be extracted. This argument accepts network destinations.

For TSM backups and TSM archives, this argument accepts the following formats:

• tsmbkp:<filespace>\<high>\<low>
• tsmarc:<filespace>\<high>\<low>

You can supply multiple instances of this argument.

Re-initializes (overwrites and replaces) the target native backup files.

Specifies the TSM client owner user password. Not required, if specified in the options file or if backing up with the Passwordaccess Generate option.

Defines the TSM filespace, high level and low level. This argument accepts the following format:

tsm_filespace\tsm_high_level\tsm_low_level

where:

• tsm_filespace is the logical space on the TSM server that contains a group of files. It can be the drive label name or UNC name.

• tsm_high_level specifies the directory path in which the file belongs.

• tsm_low_level specifies actual name of the file.

NOTE: You may only store one item the location specified by this argument. It is not possible to append an object to this location. You can use the -I command-line argument or @init to back up to a non-unique location.

Specifies the date for restore/to filter results. If it is not passed, LiteSpeed will choose the most recent archived backup. The format is yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss.

NOTE: If the backup was a striped backup and the point-in-times of the various striped files are different (rare but can be different a second or so), then the most recent of the times must be chosen.

Creates a log file. This argument accepts one of the following values:

• 0—Logging off.

• 1 or any odd value—Logging on. Log file is removed on success.

• 2 or any even value—Logging on.

The default output directory is C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Quest Software\LiteSpeed\SQL Server\Logs (or C:\ProgramData\Quest Software\LiteSpeed\SQL Server\Logs) (or C:\ProgramData\Quest Software\LiteSpeed\SQL Server\Logs). To log to a different directory run this utility with the following argument: --trace logpath = "path".

For more information, see Configure Logging in LiteSpeed.

Value used to generate the encryption key for the encryption algorithm. If you do not supply encryption key, then the program will not encrypt the backup. If you use the wrong encryption key, the restore will fail.

Caution: When encrypting data, take care not to lose the encryption key; a backup cannot be restored or recovered without the original encryption key.

Example of key: 'Mypassword'

Specifies the particular backup to use when recasting, restoring, extracting or reading from files with multiple appended backups. You can run xp_restore_headeronly to query the files contained within the backup set given by backup_file_name.

Displays the syntax summary of the LiteSpeed command-line utility.

Indicates Execute SELECT mode of operation.

Object Level Recovery can restore tables using two different internal techniques to handle the record inserts.

The first and default method uses BCP files and a TSQL BULK INSERT statement. Object Level Recovery will write a BCP format file and an accompanying binary data file to the local file system. These files may become very large depending on the table size and will require permissions to write to a temporary directory. The default TEMP location can be set by using the @TempDirectory parameter or by setting a permanent temp location in the LiteSpeed configuration file.

An alternate insertion method can be specified to use Sql Server’s Sql Native Client capabilities. This method inserts row-data directly into the destination database bypassing any storage on the local file-system. To enable this method, use the parameter @backend='SQLNativeClient' (or -b 1 from the command line). To make this the default method set the value “BackEnd=SQLNativeClient” in the Object Level Recovery section of the LiteSpeed configuration file.

Regardless of the insertion method used, the batch size can be globally managed by setting the value “BulkImportBatchSize=<N>”. This will set the number of row inserts for each batched transaction.

Specifies the name of the object to recover.

This option allows you to restore an in-memory table as a regular table.

Name of backup file to restore. Used for differential backups instead of full backup files. You can supply multiple instances of this argument.

Name of the destination server.

Location and name of the backup file device containing the object to recover.

Examples:

UNC Path: \\servername\share\path\filename

Local path: c:\filedirectory\filename 

NOTE: There can be multiple files but they must be listed in the order in which they were backed up.

Destination ON filegroup name.

Specifies location and name of the log backup file. You can supply multiple instances of this argument.

SELECT Script literal text. For more information, see Supported SELECT Statements.

Specifies the striped log file name.

NOTE: The striped files for a given log backup must be specified before the next log backup set is specified.

Instructs LiteSpeed to script or recover one or more of the following:

• Constraints—But not foreign keys
• ForeignKeys
• Indexes
• Statistics
• Triggers
• All—All of the above

The value is a list of options, separated with commas.

Destination TEXTIMAGE_ON filegroup name. Used to restore a BLOB (binary large object).

Name of comma separated file (.csv) that is generated instead restoring into a database. This is an ad hoc solution for users want to see the restored data in Excel. You can only use this argument for text data.

Instructs LiteSpeed to keep the computed columns with the object restore. This argument accepts one of the following values:

• 0—False
• 1—True

Value used to generate the encryption key for the encryption algorithm. If you do not supply encryption key, then the program will not encrypt the backup. If you use the wrong encryption key, the restore will fail.

Caution: When encrypting data, take care not to lose the encryption key; a backup cannot be restored or recovered without the original encryption key.

Example of key: 'Mypassword'

Specify a custom path for finding or creating the LSM file.

Specifies handling for OLR LSM mapfile(s).

• Create—Reads backup and creates a new mapfile. It will ignore attached LSM.
• Keep—Does not delete mapfile(s) when complete.
• Delete—Always deletes mapfile(s) when complete.

Specifies a file stream filegroup to include in the object restore.

Instructs LiteSpeed to persist log processing, so the same database backup does not have to be processed for each Object Level Recovery operation. This argument accepts one of the following values:

• 0—False (Default).
• 1—True. LiteSpeed will persist transaction log backups specified and the tail log for future use. This option can offer a huge performance gain for working with databases with large tail logs that could possibly take a long time to process.

Specifies the particular backup to use when recasting, restoring, extracting or reading from files with multiple appended backups. You can run xp_restore_headeronly to query the files contained within the backup set given by backup_file_name.

Specifies the name of the object to recover.

NOTE: Currently only tables. Table name must be preceded by database owner.

Adds a prefix to the names of the table's objects you selected to script or recover.

Specifies the user password. Passwords are case-sensitive. Required if the connection type is not a trusted connection.

The file name that the script is output into. When used with execute-select, this file contains the select statement(s).

For more information, see Supported SELECT Statements.

This is Windows Authentication.

Adds a suffix to the names of the table's objects you selected to script or recover.

Specifies the destination database.

Used by LiteSpeed to activate trace logging.

Specifies the name of the destination table. LiteSpeed will not overwrite an existing table. If you select the same server instance and database as the original table, you must use a different table name.

NOTE: For Execute-Select operations, LiteSpeed will attempt to insert (append) all selected records into existing table.

Specifies user login ID. Required if the connection type is not a trusted connection.

Login IDs are case-sensitive.

Create table script:

• 0—Off. Create table with native types, if possible; othervise (CLR UDT) create with UDT. (Default).
• 1—On. Create table with UDT.

View contents.

Specifies a temporary directory for use with Object Level Recovery. Use this argument when the default Windows temp directory does not have enough free disk space for the restore process.

Ship directory for packaging files for subsequent restore.

Specifies the type of object. If you omit this parameter the object type defaults to table, so you should use this argument to recover schema objects other than tables. This argument accepts one of the following values:

Instructs LiteSpeed to skip all transaction log backups and tail log processing. This may improve read and recovery times.

Identifies a file that contains a list of objects. The format of this file is "ObjectType,ObjectName" per line.

Tip: You can use -V and -Y arguments to create the objects list.

The @AWSUseServerSideEncryption argument enables the encryption of data stored at rest in Amazon S3. This argument accepts one of the following values:

• 0—Do not use Server Side Encryption
• 1—Use Server Side Encryption

The @AzureBlobType argument specifies the types of blobs that can be stored in the Microsoft Azure cloud storage. This argument accepts one of the following values: "Block", "Page".

The @CloudAccessKey argument specifies the name of the unique Cloud Web Service alphanumeric access key that identifies each user. The selections include Amazon Access Key, Azure Account Name, Google e-mail styled account.

The @CloudAccessKeyEnc argument specifies the name of the encrypted unique Cloud Web Service alphanumeric access key that identifies each user.

This parameter enables automatic file striping for LiteSpeed cloud backups.

This parameter contains the stripe size in GBs. LiteSpeed logic uses the database size to make a decision about the number of stripes needed for LiteSpeed cloud backups. For example, if you have a database with a size of 200GB and set @CloudAutoStripingThreshold = 50, then LiteSpeed uses 200/50 = 4 stripes.

The @CloudBucketName argument specifies the name of the container for cloud objects. Bucket names must be at least 3 and no more than 63 characters long. The selections are Amazon Bucket Name, Azure Container Name, Google Bucket Name. Google Bucket Name requirements are described at https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/naming.

The @CloudGovRegion argument enables a special restricted region for the US Government use in Amazon S3 and Azure Clouds. This argument accepts one of the following values:

• 0—Do not use government cloud (default)
• 1—Use government cloud

The @CloudRegionName argument specifies the name of the Cloud Web Service region to use for a bucket. Example values are but not limited to: us-east-1, us-east-2, us-west-1, us-west-2, ca-central-1, eu-central-1, eu-west-1, eu-west-2, ap-south-1, ap-southeast-1, ap-southeast-2, ap-northeast-1, ap-northeast-2, sa-east-1, N'Germany' and N'China'.

The @CloudSecretKey argument specifies the name of the Cloud Web Service secret key that is assigned when you initially get a Cloud account.

The @CloudSecretKeyEnc argument specifies the name of the encrypted Cloud Web Service secret key that is assigned when you initially get a Cloud account.

The @CloudStorageClass argument specifies a range of storage classes established for different use cases including:

For Amazon S3:

• Standard: Standard storage - for general-purpose storage of frequently accessed data.
• Standard-IA: Standard Infrequent Access - for long-lived, but less frequently accessed data.

• RRS: Reduced Redundancy Storage - for non-critical data considering lower level of redundancy rather than Standard storage.

For Google Storage:

• Multi_regional - for frequently accessed data around the world as per serving website content, streaming videos, or gaming and mobile applications.
• Regional - for frequently accessed data in the same region as your Google Cloud DataProc or the Google Compute Engine instances that use it, as per data analytics.
• Nearline - for infrequently accessed data (data you expect to access no more than once per month).
• Coldline - for infrequently accessed data (data you expect to access no more than once per year).

The @CloudVendor argument specifies the name of the cloud service provider. The argument accepts one of the following values: "AmazonS3", "AzureBlob" or "GoogleStorage".

DEPRECATED LiteSpeed 8.8: Was used to store for the Google Cloud Storage project ID; the project ID is now obtained from login. This parameter is retained for compatibility with old backup/restore scripts.

The @UseSSL argument specifies that the connection uses SSL security. This argument accepts one of the following values:

• 0—Do not use SSL
• 1—Use SSL (default)