BackupExec 15 Synthetic Backups and Cloud Storage

[simss]

Hello,

With BackupExec 15 it appears that you can't use synthetic backups to backup databases, system state or virtual machine level backups.

Given we are looking to create disaster recovery backups of both physical and virtual servers to cloud storage is there any other way to avoid transmitting large regularly scheduled full backups to cloud storage other than using synthetic backups?

[pkh · Accepted solution]

No. Since cloud storage is treated as an OST device, even if you can do synthetic backup, the synthetic backup also needs to be sent to the cloud storage

[Colin_Weaver · Accepted solution]

Synthetic backups are for file system data only - database virtual machine etc are not subject to synthetic backups.

However I think all agents and options have a synthetic view when it comes to a restore with the difference being a synthetic backup is something which runs after an incremental or differential which builds a full set from the previous backups and the incremental or differential where a synthetic view assembles your restore selections so it looks like a full backup and when you actually start the restore job Backup Exec goes and individually opens all  the sets in the incremental or differential chain to be able to restore what you have selected.

This synthetic view is called the Point In Time View.

With regards Cloud you would not do synthetic directly to cloud due to the processing an read data back requirements (you could duplicate the synthetic to cloud which would be the same data transfer as a full backup to cloud.  However for the point in time you might do this directly to cloud although as we don't recommend incremental (or differential) forever strategies you would have to perodically do a new full

[simss]

Thanks both, this being the case is there a recommended approach to disk to disk to cloud backup in terms of backup options such as using deduplication or not, running VM level backups as opposed to using the OS agent?

[pkh]

There is no specific recommendations as such.