With SQL Server Express, creating even simple backup jobs using SQL Agent is impossible due to the fact that SQL Agent is not available in the Express version of SQL Server.

With that in mind, I've thought about creating a remote client that would run on my NAS server and that would connect to my different SQL Server instances and issue the job of backing up those databases on a regular basis.

But SQL Server's T-SQL only lets you back up your databases to server accessible resource locations such as network shares (ie. on-site backups).

Is it possible to somehow stream those backups through the SQL Server network connection (or another connection) back to the client where they can be saved to disk (ie. off-site)? Or is there a better way to remotely backup SQL server databases besides opening a network share on the NAS server?

PS: I know there are commercial solutions that offer this. I just want to know how it's done and what's the best way to do it.

Microsoft SQL Server supports backing up to remote network locations only by means of UNC names the SQL Server (and user account it's running under) has access to.

Is it possible to create backups and stream them back to a SQL client by means of using the same database connection?

I think you would have to pull the database schema and data, then join those together to create a SQL script that can be used to recreate the database being backed up, but is this a viable solution to backing up SQL Server databases?

PS: I know there are commercial solutions that offer off-site back-ups but I'm not interested in commercial solutions at the moment.

With SQL Server Express, creating even simple backup jobs using SQL Agent is impossible due to the fact that SQL Agent is not available in the Express version of SQL Server.

With that in mind, I've thought about creating a remote client that would run on my NAS server and that would connect to my different SQL Server instances and issue the job of backing up those databases on a regular basis.

But SQL Server's T-SQL only lets you back up your databases to server accessible resource locations such as network shares.

Is it possible to somehow stream those backups through the SQL Server network connection (or another connection) back to the client where they can be saved to disk? Or is there a better way to remotely backup SQL server databases besides opening a network share on the NAS server?

With SQL Server Express, creating even simple backup jobs using SQL Agent is impossible due to the fact that SQL Agent is not available in the Express version of SQL Server.

With that in mind, I've thought about creating a remote client that would run on my NAS server and that would connect to my different SQL Server instances and issue the job of backing up those databases on a regular basis.

But SQL Server's T-SQL only lets you back up your databases to server accessible resource locations such as network shares (ie. on-site backups).

Is it possible to somehow stream those backups through the SQL Server network connection (or another connection) back to the client where they can be saved to disk (ie. off-site)? Or is there a better way to remotely backup SQL server databases besides opening a network share on the NAS server?

PS: I know there are commercial solutions that offer this. I just want to know how it's done and what's the best way to do it.