1. Live Insight – See what Minion Backup is doing every step of the way.  You can even see the percent complete for each backup as it runs.
2. Dynamic Backup Tuning – Configure thresholds and backup tuning settings. Minion Backup will adjust the tuning settings based on your thresholds!  Tuning settings can be configured even down to the time of day for maximum control of your resources.
3. Stripe, mirror, copy, and/or move backup files – Minion Backup provides extensive file action functionality, all without additional jobs.  You even get to choose which utility performs the operations.
4. Flexible backup file delete and archive – Each database and backup type can have an individual backup file retention setting. And, you can mark certain backup files as “Archived”, thus preventing Minion Backup from deleting them.
5. Shrink log file on backup – Specify the size threshold for shrinking your log file. Minion Backup logs the before and after log sizes.
6. Backup certificates – Back up your server and database certificates with secure, encrypted passwords.
7. Backup ordering – Back up databases in exactly the order you need.
8. Extensive, useful logging – Use the Minion Backup log for estimating the end of the current backup run, troubleshooting, planning, and reporting.  And errors get reported in the log table instead of in text files.  There’s almost nothing MB doesn’t log.
9. Run “missing” backups only – Did some of your database backups fail last night?  The “missing” keyword allows you to rerun a backup operation, catching those backups that failed in the last run (for that database type and backup type).  You can even tell MB to check for missing backup automatically.
10. HA/DR Aware – Our new Data Waiter feature synchronizes backup settings, backup logs, or both among Availability Group nodes; mirroring partners; log ship targets; or any other SQL Server instance.  There are other features that enhance your HA/DR scenarios as well.
11. Flexible include and exclude – Backup only the databases you want, using specific database names, LIKE expressions, and even regular expressions.
12. Run code before or after backups – This is an extraordinarily flexible feature that allows for nearly infinite configurability.
13. Integrated help – Get help on any Minion Backup object without leaving Management Studio. And, use the new CloneSettings procedure to generate template insert statements for any table, based on an example row in the table.
14. Built-in Verify – If you choose to verify your backups, set the verify command to run after each backup, or after the entire set of backups.
15. Single-job operation – You no longer need multiple jobs to run your backups.  MB allows you to configure fairly complex scenarios and manage only a single job.
16. Encrypt backups – In SQL Server 2014 and beyond, you can choose to encrypt your backups.
17. Compatible with Availability Groups – Minion Backup takes full backup of Availability Group scenarios. You can not only use the preferred AG replica for your backups, but you can also specify specific replicas for each backup type.
18. Scenario testing— Dynamic tuning, file delete, and file paths all have facilities for testing your configuration before you rely on it.
19. Automated operation – Run the Minion Backup installation scripts, and it just goes.  You can even rollout to hundreds of servers almost as easily as you can to a single server.
20. Granular configuration without extra jobs – Configure extensive settings at the default, and/or database levels with ease.  Say good-bye to managing multiple jobs for specialized scenarios.  Most of the time you’ll run MB with a single job.

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