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Backup Type: Synthetic

A synthetic full backup combines an initial full backup with subsequent incremental backups, continuously merging them into an up-to-date full backup available for restoration at any time.

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About this video

A synthetic full backup combines the efficiency of incremental backups with the simplicity of full backup restoration. The process begins with a single full backup, after which only incremental backups are taken to capture changes over time. Each incremental is then automatically merged into the full backup, synthetically producing an updated full backup image without the overhead of running repeated full backups from scratch. This approach offers two significant advantages. First, it reduces backup windows and resource consumption by eliminating the need for frequent full backups. Second, it ensures that a complete, current backup is always available for restoration, since the synthetic full is continuously updated as each incremental is absorbed. The result is a recovery-ready backup that reflects the latest state of the data at any given point in time.

What you'll learn

What's covered

Synthetic Full Backup

Key terms

Disaster Recovery
DR
The process and procedures for recovering IT systems and data following a disruptive event.
Synthetic Full Backup
A backup type that combines a previous full backup with subsequent incremental backups to construct a new full backup without reading from the source system again.
Full Backup
A complete copy of all selected data, serving as the baseline backup type from which other backup strategies operate.
Incremental Backup
A backup type that copies only the data that has changed since the last backup of any type, minimizing storage use but requiring multiple restore steps.
Recovery Point Objective
RPO
The maximum acceptable amount of data loss measured in time, defining how far back data must be recoverable.

Topics

Synthetic Full Backup Backup Types Incremental Backup Data Backup Disaster Recovery Data Protection

Transcript

Another type of backup is a synthetic full backup, or a synthetic backup.

A synthetic backup is just like a full and an incremental backup combined. So let's say we do a full backup at the beginning of the day, and then we are doing incrementals throughout the day. So we have these incrementals that are going. But what a synthetic backup will do is take those incremental backups and roll them into the full backup, and so we have an ongoing full backup at any point in time that we can do a restore to. So that is what a synthetic full is.

Essentially what it's doing is taking the full, and then after the fact, when it takes an incremental, rolling it into that full. So now we are synthetically creating a full backup.

This is great for two reasons. One is we only have to do that full backup once, and then we can do increments throughout the day. And now what's going to be created is a full synthetic backup. So we've got a full synthetic backup that's available to us. So if we want to do a restore, then we can restore that full synthetic at that point in time.

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