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Dell NetWorker 19.9 Administration Guide

When to use synthetic full backups

Synthetic full backups are supported only for backups of file system data with NetWorker 8.0 and later.

Synthetic full backups provide the most benefit in the following environments:

  • The backup window is less than the amount of time it takes to perform a full backup.
  • A client is at a remote location, and data transfer over the network to the server is a performance issue for either the network or the client.
  • Network bandwidth is limited.
  • Large backups over the network are cost-prohibitive.

Synthetic full backups include only the NetWorker server and storage node. If all the data is on a few storage nodes, then the network overhead for creating the synthetic full backup can be drastically reduced when compared to a traditional full backup of the same save sets.

NOTE:Under most conditions, synthetic full backups can free network bandwidth and client resources. However, a synthetic full backup might take longer to run on the storage node than a full backup because incremental backups are combined into a synthetic full backup. Without proper planning, synthetic full backups might affect the performance of the storage node. 

To manage resource usage, perform synthetic full operations outside of the normal backup window. Also, synthetic full backups do not eliminate the requirement for full backups. It is best practice to schedule and perform full backups on a monthly or quarterly basis and limit the number of incremental backups.

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