Difference between 3rd party backup agent for Microsoft SQL server and the backup functionality provided by MS SQL Server?

Solution 1:

The 3rd party agents will often have "brick level" backups and restores which allow you to restore parts of a database (tables, etc.) rather than only the entire database. They also do not require you to stage the output (doubling your disk requirement) by backing up the database directly.

Solution 2:

Some third party products, such as Quest's LiteSpeed and RedGate's SQLBackup, will also provide you additional data level compression and encryption options unavailable through SQL Server's native backup mechanism. This is much favorable to options at the NTFS level.

Solution 3:

It depends on the backup solution, but generally the benefits are:

• Integrated with your overall backup system
• Single point of restore, which can be beneficial in a hectic DR scenario
• Direct-to-tape backup on a remote tape library

Solution 4:

In addition to what was already mentioned...

Although SQL 2008 has it built-in, SQL 2005 and below benefit from many third-party backup compression capabilities.

I can't say that I would advise against using MS SQL backup functionality because it works well and is obviously free (included in SQL Server), but if you're looking for more bells and whistles, or looking for a more integrated recovery solution, then the third-party tools are the way to go.