1)  If you use SQL to do the backups, and then backup those BKF files, you have to restore the BKF file to disk before you can restore SQL  If you use the SQL Agent, you can restore directly from tape  

 

 

Also, if you dump the SQL data to disk, then you need more disk space - perhaps not an issue if your DB is 1GB, but more so if it's 1TB!

The SQL Agent can also do things like automate the restore of the master database in the event of a disaster recovery.

You forget the advantage that using sql server backup and not the agent has, it truncates the log file on a full backup, unlike symantecs full backup which you have to run a second backup on the log files to get rid of them. This is something i found out recently, and you have on you site, but what I have been wondering is, since you run a full backup, the log file backup is basically a waste of space, but because you run it right after the backup and its not the server truncating it based on the full backup, there will probably be changes in database bewteen the time you run the backup of the databases and the time you backup the log files, so you will have to keep them, unlike if the **bleep** agent truncated them in the first place.

I'm complaining about keeping them because of the sizes of the log files i have, recently installed sql server (2 weeks) has over 300GB in transaction logs, and i have multiple sql servers with similar sized log files.