Performance Testing ZSTD Backup Compression

Anthony Nocentino gives SQL Server’s new backup compression format a try:

SQL Server 2025 introduces a new compression algorithm, ZSTD (Zstandard), which can help with database backup performance. The implementation of ZSTD gives you more control over your backup performance in terms of CPU consumption and backup runtime. I recently ran some rough benchmarks comparing ZSTD, and its three compression levels, with the existing MS_XPRESS algorithm, and the results are compelling and give you some additional tools for managing performance for database backups.

Click through for Anthony’s test and findings.