Backup Exec 2012 - Differential/Incremental schedule

[WW_]

Hi,

I had the following schedule in BE 2010:

• Full Backup - last Friday of the month;
• Incremental backup - each Friday (except the last of the month);
• Differential backup - Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

All backups - archive bit based.

Storage device - tape library.

Advantages of this schedule - time-consuming full backup - once a month only. Weekly incremental backups allowed to cut weekly data fluctuations. Differential backups allowed to improve RPO.

Restore process: last full backup + all incremental backups + last differential.

How can I reproduce this schedule in BE 2012?

It looks like mix of incremental and differential jobs for the same server are not allowed.

Thanks,

WW

[pkh]

Yes.  You cannot mix incremental and differential backups in the same job in BE 2012.  This is because it is very easy to restore the wrong sequence during the restore.

[w-d · Accepted solution]

The simplest way it would be for you to switch to this strategy:

- Weekly Full on Friday

- Daily Differentials on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday

[pkh]

Why not a weekly full and daily incrementals? This way he can backup less each day

[w-d]

That is true, but with differential backups the recovery process will be quicker. This is also more safe to have differentials instead of incrementals, because you will need only 1 full and 1 differential backup to make the restore. In case of incrementals you will need full and all incrementals between full and incremental you need to recover from to perform the successful restore.

I also mentioned differentials because customer configuration was based mostly on differentials, not incrementals

[WW_]

Full + Differentials will  work for me.

But, there is some inconvenience.

I have about 15TB of data in one of offices (10TB archive storage + 5TB production storage).

Full backup will take about 75-80 hours.

Before I could run full backups on different weekends.

Now I need to switch to Weekly Full +  Daily Differential for the production storage and Yearly Full + Monthly Icremental for the archive.

From my perspective, the restriction of running incremental and differntial backups for the same resource is a bit artificial.

Thanks,

WW

[pkh]

For your new backup scheme you need to use the modified time method. The archive bit method will not work

[Maddy888]

Hi WW,

Following thread should help you out.

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/be2012-template-rules

Regards

Maddy

[WW_]

The archive bit method will definitely work.

Archive bit based backup works for all Windows-based systems.

Timestamp method will work for both Linux and Windows based systems.

Properly configured backup schedules like Full + Differential, Full + Incremental, or Full + Icremental + Differential will work with both methods.

Indication of the file state (archive bit or timestamp) is not related to the backup method or schedule.

[pkh]

Now I need to switch to Weekly Full +  Daily Differential for the production storage and Yearly Full + Monthly Icremental for the archive.

In your proposed scheme, if you are using the archive bit method, your monthly incremental will only backup files which are add/changed since the last weekly full backup, not the yearly full.  This is because the monthly full would have reset all the archive bits.

However using the modified time method, the job recognises which full backup is the baseline because the timestamp is unique to that selection list.