PowerProtect Data Manager 19.9 Microsoft Application Agent SQL Server User Guide

Configure connection settings

DD Boost devices do not distinguish among Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)/Internet Protocol (IP), Fibre Channel (FC), and LAN, WAN, and MAN network types. DD Boost devices can successfully operate where packet loss is strictly 0% and latency is less than 20 ms.

Enable instant file initialization

For better restores, enable the instant file initialization feature on SQL Server. SQL Server's initialization procedure writes zeros to the portion of the disk that contains the data and the log files. Enabling the instant file initialization feature does not enable zeroing of the disk for the data files.

Configure usage limits for DD streams

Configure a sufficient number of DD streams for better performance of backups and restores. The streams control backup and restore parallelism for each database.

The Microsoft application agent requires one stream per save set that you back up or restore. When you perform striped backups, each stripe requires one stream. The stripes are concurrently run for each database. Databases are sequentially backed up and restored. When you use stripes, the number of streams must be equal to or more than the number of stripes.

The minimum number of streams for a non-stripe environment is 1.

Configuring usage limits of DD streams provides more information about streams limit, impact of exceeding the limits, and configuring the usage limits.