Dell NetWorker 19.9 Administration Guide

Scheduling considerations for synthetic full backups

A synthetic full backup is resource intensive because it concurrently performs both recover and save operations. As a result, it is best to perform synthetic full operations outside of the normal backup window.

You can do this by creating separate workflows in a data protection policy for synthetic full backups. When using synthetic full backups, do not exceed the time interval of one month between traditional full backups.

To maintain current resource usage, which is defined as the space usage in the backup media and client file indexes, run synthetic full backups in place of traditional full backups. Running synthetic full backups more frequently than traditional backups are currently run results in the consumption of more space in the backup media and client file indexes.

For example, if a full backup occurs once a week, you can replace the full backup with an incremental backup followed by a synthetic full backup without increasing the backup space usage.

If you perform a full backup on Sunday and then incremental backups on Monday through Saturday, then consider changing to the following schedule:

• Full backup on the first Sunday of the month.
• Incremental backups on Monday through Saturday.
• Synthetic full backups on the second, third, fourth, and fifth Sunday of the month.