PowerProtect Data Manager 19.14 File System User Guide

Best practices for file system backups

Consider the following best practices for file system backups.

Ensure that subsequent backup schedules do not overlap.
If a full backup is in progress when the next incremental backup starts, then the incremental backup is promoted to a full backup. If the schedules overlap, the incremental backup continues to get promoted to a full backup because a full backup has not completed. Also, overlapping backup schedules might fail as a result of concurrent snapshots or other limitations that are caused by the underlying system.

To identify the optimal backup window between full backups and the first incremental backup, measure the backup time that is required for a small asset. Use this time as an indicator to assess the backup window for assets that are larger in size. For example:
- Data backup speed = asset size / time taken to back up the asset
- Total backup size = sum of the total size of the assets to be backed up for a full backup
- Maximum backup window = total backup size / data backup speed
- Optimal backup window = maximum backup window / parallelism value
If the data source is encrypted or compressed, the DD system provides limited deduplication. This increases the time that is taken to back up the data, as compared to data that is not encrypted or compressed.