Full backups daily using Synthetic backups

[Per_Nielsen]

Hi,

I am required to make a full backup daily on tape.

I have 4TB diskspace for B2D, a LTO5 tape drive and about 1.4TB of data to backup.

What I want to do is :

- Create a weekly full backup to disk.

- Create daily incremential backups to disk.

- Use the weekly full + daily incremential to make a synthetic full backup to tape.

Is this possible ?

Should I make the Full + incremential + synthetic on B2D, and then duplicate it to tape, or is it OK to put the synthetic directly to tape ?

I have tried the sythetic-to-tape a few times, but I always end up with a synthetic job stuck at "Loading Tape".

Regards

Per

[pkh · Accepted solution]

I think you need to do your synthetic backup on disk and then duplicate to tape.  You can have your true image backups on tape and do your synthetic backup on disk.

[BanksyMJ]

Hi Per Nielsen

PKH is correct. You can only perform Synthetic backups to disk. This is because BE needs to merge the incrementals with the full backups to produce your "synthetic full". This wouldn't be possible with a tape (or rather the amount of I/O on the tape and tape drive would be huge). If you want to ultimately store on tape you can add a stage to duplicate the synthetic full to tape.

[Per_Nielsen]

Hi guys

Thank you very much for the answers. I will make jobs accordingly.

E.g:

Friday: Full (copy 1.4TB from fileserver) with linked duplication to tape.
Sun-Thu : Incrementials.
Sun-Thu : After incrementials make a synthetic full with duplication to tape.

One question though.. (I need to understand this completely) :
When I make a full backup and the next day an incremential, and then do a synthetic backup - this produces a new snapshot that renders the previous full/synthetic backup obsolete as the most recent full backup ?

I would like to delete the full backup from the previous day to save diskspace.

Regards

Per

[pkh]

When you do a synthetic backup, it is the same as doing a a full backup.  You can delete the previous full backup if you don't need it.

[Per_Nielsen]

Excellent.  Thank you very much.

Regards

Per