Minion Backup
The new standard in SQL Server backups: comprehensive and flexible, and no extra jobs
Prices
Minion Backup: Free. Download and use it today!
Minion Backup Enterprise: $500 per managed instance
Downloads

By downloading this software, you agree to our End User License Agreement (EULA). So you should really read that.

Resources

Highlights Support Webinar: Introduction to Minion Backup

We have extensive documentation, both within the product and here!

PDF | DOCX

The New Standard for Backups

Minion Backup is the new standard in SQL Server backup solutions. We have developed it to be the most comprehensive and flexible SQL backup solution on the market. MB is fully HA/DR enabled and has many features that help you manage, plan, troubleshoot, and report on all your SQL backups. And it does it without any extra jobs. And when coupled with Minion Enterprise, MB provides unprecedented management, control, planning and reporting. MB has so many features we couldn’t possibly tell you about them all here. Watch the Introduction to Minion Backup webinar to see what Minion Backup can do for you and your SQL maintenance lifecycle.

Integration with Minion Enterprise

Installations of Minion Backup can be integrated with Minion Enterprise (ME). You can implement SQL backup configurations and schedules centrally from Minion Enterprise, and report on SQL backup data in one place! There isn’t a more comprehensive solution for SQL backup and SQL maintenance lifecycle management. Email us at Support@MidnightDBA.com to get a 30 day trial of Minion Enterprise today!

Installations of Minion Backup can be integrated with Minion Enterprise (ME). You can implement SQL backup configurations and schedules centrally from Minion Enterprise, and report on SQL backup data in one place! There isn’t a more comprehensive solution for SQL backup and SQL maintenance lifecycle management. Email us at Support@MidnightDBA.com to get a 30 day trial of Minion Enterprise today!

Features
What’s new in MB 1.4?

The newest Minion Maintenance (1.1) includes all three backup and maintenance modules! Minion Backup 1.4 updates include:

  • Added delete for SyncCmds.
  • Fixed: Creating “Christmas tree folders” when using robocopy with multiple files.
  • Fixed: Missing a couple entries in the InlineTokens table.
  • Fixed: Some sync commands being written to SyncCmds table even though SyncLogs is 0.
  • Fixed: Wasn’t logging properly when a DB is in an AG.
  • Fixed: Formatting issues in Minion.HELP.
  • Fixed: Wrong restore location when restoring to a named instance and the path is being converted from a local drive.  The instance name was being included in the UNC path.
In 1.3, we added:
  • New installer! The new MB 1.3 installer comes with Minion CheckDB 1.0. Choose to install one, the other, or both, and on multiple servers!
  • Increased international support.
  • Inline Tokens.
  • Enhanced restore functionality.
  • Minion.BackupRestoreSettingsPath – This table stores the path settings for restore scenarios. In other words, here is where you define the paths and file names the system will restore to.
  • Minion.BackupRestoreTuningThresholds – This table holds thresholds used to determine when to change the tuning of a restore; and the tuning settings per threshold.
  • New fields in Minion.BackupSettingsPath – Minion.BackupSettingsPath now has new fields that let you specify FileName and FileExtension.
  • Keyword search in Minion.HELP.
Why does the minion have four arms, but only two eyes?

Because while monitoring database servers is a difficult task, managing changes across thousands of those servers takes a lot of effort. So while the two eyes are enough to pinpoint database issues, the two extra hands come in handy when doing your bidding. And besides, just look at the size of those gorgeous eyes!

I like to use different tuning parameters to speed up my backups. Does Minion Backup support this?

This is one of the things that Minion Backup does best. You can not only tune your backups, but you can specify different tuning parameters all the way down to the time of day and backup type. There’s not a product on the market that has the level of configuration MB does for tuning your backups.

What’s new in MB 1.4?

The newest Minion Maintenance (1.1) includes all three backup and maintenance modules! Minion Backup 1.4 updates include:

  • Added delete for SyncCmds.
  • Fixed: Creating “Christmas tree folders” when using robocopy with multiple files.
  • Fixed: Missing a couple entries in the InlineTokens table.
  • Fixed: Some sync commands being written to SyncCmds table even though SyncLogs is 0.
  • Fixed: Wasn’t logging properly when a DB is in an AG.
  • Fixed: Formatting issues in Minion.HELP.
  • Fixed: Wrong restore location when restoring to a named instance and the path is being converted from a local drive. The instance name was being included in the UNC path.
FAQ
  • New installer! The new MB 1.3 installer comes with Minion CheckDB 1.0. Choose to install one, the other, or both, and on multiple servers!
  • Increased international support
  • Inline Tokens
  • Enhanced restore functionality
  • Minion.BackupRestoreSettingsPath – This table stores the path settings for restore scenarios. In other words, here is where you define the paths and file names the system will restore to.
  • Minion.BackupRestoreTuningThresholds – This table holds thresholds used to determine when to change the tuning of a restore; and the tuning settings per threshold.
  • New fields in Minion.BackupSettingsPath – Minion.BackupSettingsPath now has new fields that let you specify FileName and FileExtension.
  • Keyword search in Minion.HELP.

Because while monitoring database servers is a difficult task, managing changes across thousands of those servers takes a lot of effort. So while the two eyes are enough to pinpoint database issues, the two extra hands come in handy when doing your bidding. And besides, just look at the size of those gorgeous eyes!

Minion Backup is FREE. It costs nothing, nada, zip, zilch! You can download it as many times as you want, install it on as many servers as you want, look at the code all you want, add your own alerts, etc etc. Just don’t offer our code to others, use portions of our code in your products, or put your own name on our code; if you’re going to share the joy that is Minion Backup, link back here to MinionWare.net. We also have an enterprise version, called Minion Backup Enterprise, which is $500 per managed server. MB Enterprise allows you to centrally configure, manage, and report on backups on all managed servers across your enterprise. Email MinionWare for a quote!

MB can certainly scale as large as you need. As a standalone product it has many features that help you with HA/DR, reporting, and even mass deployment. However, when it’s coupled with Minion Enterprise it gives you never before seen power to manage, report, plan, and scale the backups for your entire organization.

We get this question a lot. The honest answer is that we want to make tools that WE want to use. We didn’t like the maintenance already out there, so we put our decades of experience behind Minion Backup, Minion Reindex, and Minion CheckDB. (And if you think those are good, take a look at Minion Enterprise, which blows the free modules out of the water.

Our documentation is extensive, and includes full explanations, examples, and more. You can download it from our website, and it also comes embedded in the products themselves. However, if you’re a better visual learner, then we also have training videos that not only teach you the concepts, but also discuss some of the nuances and give good advice for configuring the product’s features. And if you’re still unsure about something after that, then feel free to reach out to us.

Yes. Just enter a support ticket and we’ll help you the best we can.

 

I realize that some companies are afraid of xp_cmdshell, however, there’s no need to be. But to answer the actual question, we wanted a fully-functioning product. There are many limitations to T-SQL and to get the features we needed we only had two choices: xp_cmdshell and CLR. Between the two of them xp_cmdshell is the most desirable. There was no way we could require you to enable CLR on every one of your database servers. And the things we would need to be able to do in CLR would require us to make untrustworthy procedures. This is unacceptable. It’s incredibly easy to lockdown xp_cmdshell so that only sysadmins have access. So there’s no reason to be afraid of it. We explain the ins and outs of xp_cmdshell use, security, and lockdown in this article: Security Theater. Here’s a link to another blog on the topic if you’d like further reading.

MB can absolutely help you with your DR scenarios. We have features that make it very easy to switch settings between your primary and DR sites.

MB is fully HA/DR aware. It has many features that help you manage your HA/DR scenarios. For starters, it’vs fully AG aware, Mirroring aware, and Log Shipping aware. You can sync logs and server settings among all replicas, standardize backup locations, and even choose which replicas backups are run on. There’s more and our documentation has all the details.

MB can be setup to automatically backup all your server-level and database-level certificates. You can even easily rotate encryption algorithms, passwords, and certificates for encrypted backups.

Live Insight for MB allows you to not only see what’s happening at every step of your backup process, but it also has a status monitor that shows you the percent.

MB has a very rich delete routine that allows you to make changes on the fly, report on space, construct what-if scenarios, archive backup files, and perform mass operations on an entire server. It’s very comprehensive.

Yes. It’s easy to configure and doesn’t require any extra jobs.

This is one of the things that Minion Backup does best. You can not only tune your backups, but you can specify different tuning parameters all the way down to the time of day and backup type. There’s not a product on the market that has the level of configuration MB does for tuning your backups.

MB can be easily setup to copy files to as many locations as necessary. This is very rich functionality because it can not only copy files, but also move them as well. Not only that, but you can also use your choice of utilities to perform the actions. You can even use multiple utilities during the same backup operation if you have the need.

MB is a very easy setup. Simply supply your backup location and run the setup script. MB installs with schedules and everything else it needs and will start protecting your server immediately. We even help you do mass installations so you can roll it out to your entire organization as easily as you do to a single server.

We both have our own criteria for giving hugs, so each request is considered on an individual basis. However, we often hand out Pop-tarts in our sessions, so stop by and you might get lucky.

Tutorials
Testimonials
“These tools are simple to install and configure but are extremely versatile. And best of all free! But be forewarned, they really like documentation. Hour after hour of video and hundreds of pages of documentation are available (so far).”
Kenneth Fisher
Sherman, TX
“I’ve been using the MinionWare Backup/Index/CheckDB suite for over a year now and I’m thrilled with it.”
Travis Bish
Atlanta, GA
“I am happy to see tools like Minion out there to help the “Accidental DBA or NoDBA shops” well even enterprise DBA shops for that matter.”
Jason Brimhall
Salt Lake City, UT
“I like this solution, it’s easy to deploy, configure and run.”
Andrew Pruski
Dublin, Ireland