A proper data backup & disaster recovery plan will always help you bring your business back as soon as possible from a data loss or disaster event.
The effective backup strategy is determined by the three factors listed below,
- Calculating the storage requirements based on your retention and compliance policy
- Identifying the proper system resource requirements for the seamless backup process
- Reducing the Recovery Time Objectives by practicing regular mock recoveries
The synthetic full backup is one of the modern backup approaches to optimize the above parameters for a faster backup & recovery. BDRSuite has introduced the synthetic full backup feature in its recent v5.0 release. Let us see what is synthetic full backup and how it works in this article.
What is Synthetic Full Backup?
To better understand synthetic full backup, let’s first define two basic backup methods: Full Backup and Incremental Backup.
Full backup: This is a method of copying the entire data set of a VM/physical machine to a different storage medium.
Incremental backup: This method begins with a full backup and then backs up only the data blocks that have changed since the previous backup.
A synthetic full backup is a modern data backup method that creates a new full backup by combining an initial full backup and subsequent incremental backups at the specified time intervals. Synthetic backup also starts with a full backup followed by the subsequent incremental backups. During the synthetic full backup schedule, the incremental backups are then combined with the initial full backup, and this newly created synthetic full backup serves as a starting point for the upcoming incremental backups.
How does it differ from the Additional Full Backup?
When you perform an additional full backup, the BDRSuite retrieves data from the source and sends it to the backup repository. It copies the entire data from the source machine to the backup repository.
An additional full backup can be slow and takes a long time if the source server has a lot of data to process and take much longer if your network traffic is busy. You can see an increased server resource utilization while processing the additional full backup.
Whereas during the synthetic full backup, the BDRSuite does not retrieve the data from the source. Instead, it creates a new full backup by combining a previous full backup and a chain of subsequent incremental backups on the backup repository. A lot of processing takes place on the backup repository instead of on your source. This frees up resource usage on your host/source and bypasses having to copy a large amount of data over the network.
As a result, the data in the created synthetic full backup file is identical to the data in an additional full backup.
Advantages of synthetic full backup
- The synthetic full backup does not use network resources as it is combining the data of the previous full & incremental backup
- The synthetic full backup produces less load on the production environment as it is combining the data right on the backup repository
- Saves a lot of time compared to Additional Full Backup
How to configure Synthetic Full Backup?
The synthetic full backup feature is introduced in BDRSuite v5.0. You have to select a schedule for the synthetic full backup to run while configuring your backup job. Synthetic full backup scheduling is an optional configuration, you can create the backup job with/without enabling the synthetic merge.
In the scheduling section of the backup configuration page, just below the incremental schedule setting, you can find a toggle to enable the synthetic full backup. Enable the synthetic full backup by toggling the slider to the right.
Once enabled you have to specify the scheduling for the synthetic merge to happen. You can select to run the synthetic merge on a weekly or monthly basis.
- If you have scheduled the incremental backups to run Every Few Hours/Min or Daily or After Backup, then you can set the synthetic merge frequency as weekly or monthly
- If you have scheduled the incremental backups to run Weekly or Monthly, then you can set the synthetic merge frequency to happen only on a monthly basis
- Synthetic merge is disabled for Manually & One Time incremental backup schedules
If you are selecting the synthetic full merge to happen on a weekly basis, then you have to select a day and start time to run the synthetic merge. You can select one or more days in a week to run the synthetic merge.
If you are selecting the synthetic full merge to happen on a monthly basis, then you have to select the month, select a day in the month and start time to run the synthetic merge. You can select one or more months in a year to run the synthetic merge.
How do Synthetic Full Backups work?
When a synthetic full backup is scheduled, BDRSuite triggers a new incremental backup and adds it to the backup chain. This ensures that all changes up to that point in time are reflected in the synthetic full backup recovery point.
Once the incremental backups are finished, BDRSuite begins combining the last available full backup with all the subsequent incremental backups to create a synthetic full backup.
Once the synthetic merge is completed, You can see the backup chain that contains an older full backup, followed by a set of incremental backups, and the newly created synthetic full backup.
Conclusion
A synthetic full backup is a modern approach to taking periodic full backups without utilizing the production resources. It simplifies the full backup creation process and reduces the time taken to recover the data. Also, it frees up infrastructure and network resources thereby saving you time.
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