Incremental forever backup strategy
IBM Storage Protect Plus provides a backup strategy called incremental forever. Rather than scheduling periodic full backup jobs, this backup solution requires only one initial full backup. Afterward, an ongoing sequence of incremental backup jobs occurs.
Prior to 10.1.13, the IBM Storage Protect Plus Exchange database supports full database backup on both New Technology File System (NTFS) and Resilient File System (ReFS) volumes. However, the incremental forever backups were only supported for Exchange databases on NTFS volumes, and not for Exchange databases residing on ReFS volumes.
Beginning with 10.1.13, the incremental forever backups are supported for Exchange databases on ReFS volumes. When backing up a database, the initial backup operation creates a full database backup, and subsequent backups are incremental forever.
- Reduces the amount of data that goes across the network
- Reduces data growth because all incremental backups contain only the blocks that changed since the previous backup
- Reduces the duration of backup jobs
The IBM Storage Protect Plus incremental forever process includes the following steps:
- The first backup job creates a VSS snapshot of the Exchange application. As a result, the database files are in an application consistent state. The complete database files are copied to the vSnap location.
- All subsequent backups create a VSS snapshot of the Exchange application. The database files are in an application consistent state. However, only the change blocks of the database files are copied to the vSnap location.
- The backups are reconstructed at each point in time that a backup is performed, making it possible to recover the database from any single backup point.