Disk-Assisted Backup Whitepaper

Figure 4.

Figure 4 shows how a synthetic full backup is created. The Restore Media Agent (RMA) reads the full

backup from the backup medium, which can be a tape or a disk. The data is sent to another RMA,

which reads the incremental backups from the File Library and consolidates the data. The

consolidated data is then sent to the Backup Media Agent (BMA), which writes the synthetic full

backup to the backup medium. The backup media can be a tape or a disk.

Later on, the synthetic full backup is typically merged with subsequent incremental backups into a new

synthetic backup. The procedure can be repeated indefinitely, either after each incremental backup,

or at a desired interval.

How HP Data Protector software synthetic backup restore works

Restore from a synthetic full backup is equivalent to restore from a conventional full backup. The

following figures present different situations, supposing you need to restore your data to the latest

possible state. In all examples, a full backup and four incremental backups of the backup object exist.

The difference is in the use of synthetic backup.

Figure 5.

In Figure 5, a synthetic full backup exists, which is used for restore by default. The restore chain

consists of only two sessions, namely the synthetic full backup and the subsequent incremental