Always incremental backup in BE

[mk128935]

Sorry for the very basic question but can somebody explain to me why Backup Exec can't support Always Incremental backup (merging incremental to the full backup taken at some point time thus allowing to run incrementals forever to reduce the time required to take a full backup). I heard NBU can support this. Can't you take incrementals forever if you want? (I would imagine restore would be quite cumbersome...). I appreciate the feedback. 

[pkh]

You can use Synthetic Backup in BE to merge incremental backups into their full backup to produce a new full backup.

However, just doing incremental backups forever is not recommended because

1) the restore will be long.

2) if any of the incremental backups are not usable, then subsequent incremntal backups are useless.

[mk128935]

Thanks. Is synthetic backup in BE usable in an actual environment? Can this be a substitute for "Always Incremental"? I heard the overhead to merge incrementals is so high, its really not worth using (you have to read all the catalogs plus do the merging...). Also, my understanding was that in BE, incrementals don't rely on the previous incrementals (they can be used on their own) due to the cataloging nature of BE. I understand your point about restore being very long.

[Colin_Weaver · Accepted solution]

For a complete (i.e DR/Point-in-Time) restore of any resource then the complete incremental chain must be intact all the way back to and including the full

BE does have an ability to restore just the data held in an incremental set using the Restore from a Backup Set option but that won't give a DR capability and would therefore be rare to meet all of the required backup and restore requirements for any single resource.