Sane number of NDMP incrementals?

[altmiket]

hey guys,

i've found that our incremental backups run at warp speed.  i can get them all done in a few hours, vs. a few days for fulls.  

i'm wondering how many levels of incremental backups can i do via NDMP?

i'm running fulls over the weekends now, but i'm thinking it might be feasible to do fulls once every 2 weekends, and incrementals every day in between.

would save a ton of tapes, and a lot of time.  

we rarely do restores, so time to restore isn't that big a deal for us.

does it sound ok do have 1 full and then 13 incrementals?  is that doable, and not crazy?

what do you think?

thanks!

[Darren_Dunham]

Depends on what you're willing to put up with for restores.

Also, what's your NDMP host?  Not every one supports true "incrementals" (cumulative incrementals) (Network appliance doesn't for instance).  After 9 "incrementals", it's doing a differential incremental since hitting the 9th.  What you could do is a differential once a week or so, and cumulatives in between.  Or if your rate of change is very low, just differentials.

I have several machines where I do fulls once a month, and some type of incremental daily.  I know what the change rate is, I know what effect this has on my ability to restore, and I know how much I save in backup resources.  It's not for every situation.

 --

Darren 

[Omar_Villa]

Full --> Monthly

Incremental --> Weekly

Differential --> Daily

if you NAS support this is best to do also works for any other device who has a big amount of data and you dont want to backed up every week fully, you can do it this way.

hope this helps.

regards