Synthetic backup after a Cumulative incremental backup?

[user1234]

Hello,

I am using BackupExec 2014 running on a windows 2012 server. I want to create a synthetic backup after a full backup and a culmulative incremental backup.  (Full Backup-> Cumulative Incremental Backup -> Synthetic Backup) But I am unable to do so. The only way I seem to be able to do a synthetic backup is after one full backup and one differential incremental backup (Full Backup ->Differential Incremental Backup ->Synthetic Backup). Is this the only way to go about doing it?  The option seems to be very rigid. 

What if I want to do a full backup and 2 differential incremental backups before I do a synthetic backup? I cannot seem to customize the process to my needs. 

Please let me know. I am a new user and am unable to find a solution to this problem anywhere online.

Thanks

[pkh · Accepted solution]

If your cumulative incremental backup means backing new and changed files since the last full backup, then you should use the term differential backup when talking about BE. Likewise, if differential incremental backup means backing up new and changed files since the last incremental or full backup, then use the term incremental backup.

Assuming that my interpretation of your terms are correct, you cannot do a differential backup and then a synthetic backup.  This is by design.  A synthetic backup is meant to aggregate one or more incremental backups with the last full backup into a new full backup.

When you create a schedule backup job which includes a synthetic backup, you will get a full backup job, an incremental backup job and a synthetic backup job.  It is up to you to edit each of these jobs and change the schedule to your liking.  For example, you can schedule the full backup job to run monthly, the incremental backup job to run daily and then the synthetic backup job to run weekly.

I would suggest that you read the Admin Guide on how to schedule jobs.

[user1234]

Yes, I indeed meant differential and incremental backups when I was refering to cumulative incremental backup and differential incremental backup.

Thank you very much for the clarification, your answer was really helpful!

Regards,

user1234

[Colin_Weaver]

Just to add to pkh's comment

Backup Exec came from a Microsoft Windows background so our use of the terms Incremental and Differential closely matches Microsoft's use of the same terms.

NetBackup however used the terms Cumulative incremental and Differential Incremental backup (probably) because it was developed from more of a Unix viewpoint.