SQL compression

[MSJ]

Can I use Native SQL Compression with the VEEAM SQL plugin, or am I restricted to using the --use_compression option to use the compression built into VEEAM?

[PetrM]

Hello Mike and Welcome to Veeam R&D Forums!

Native SQL compression is not supported at the moment, but it is on the roadmap. I cannot provide any timelines, as we have not received many requests for this functionality. Could you please explain why the built-in Veeam compression does not meet your needs?

Thanks!

[MSJ]

Hi,
I prefer to use native compression to minimize the amount of network traffic as I have sites with limited network bandwidth. I'm assuming that VEEAM compresses the backup when written into the repository, unlike SQL which compresses the backup as it runs and only copies the compressed data over the network.

My experience for this comes from the MSDB backupset table which shows an identical backup_size and compressed_backup_size value for all databases backed up by VEEAM, but significantly different sizes when native SQL compression is used.

Native SQL compression
database_name backup_start_date backup_finish_date backup_size compressed_backup_size
master 2026-03-02 01:00:00.000 2026-03-02 01:00:00.000 3892224 784413

VEEAM --use_compression
master 2026-03-02 00:31:15.000 2026-03-02 00:31:16.000 12668928 12668928

Cheers,
Mike

[PetrM]

Hi Mike,

Veeam compression is performed on the source server, so the compressed data is sent over the network. Moreover, we can control the compression algorithm and even use a more aggressive algorithm at the cost of increased CPU usage, but I’d suggest sticking with the default option.

Regarding the identical backup_size and compressed_backup_size values, that’s an interesting observation. However, I don’t think it’s relevant because SQL Server simply isn’t aware of our compression. From SQL Server’s perspective, the data is sent to the VDI device and it reports its size, it doesn’t know that we perform compression. By the way, making SQL Server aware of our compression is a good feature request.

Thanks!