Offsite Backup with only two restore points

[JamesNT]

We keep only two restore points for all clients with offsite backup.

Question: Should we do the synthetic full?

JamesNT

[DGrinev]

Hi James,

It depends on the storage characteristics since the Synthetic fulls are very I\O intensive.
Can you provide a bit more details about backup job settings?

Thanks!

[JamesNT]

Backup jobs run once a day (3a.m.) and synthetic fulls are done every MWF for some and TTh for others. All servers being backed up are Hyper-V guests and are Windows Server 2016 or higher.

Backup storage is an MD3200 attached to a dell r710.

JamesNT

[foggy]

That fulls frequency is a bit overkill. I'd rather go with a forever incremental backup method or at least switch to at least weekly fulls.

[JamesNT]

These are forever incrementals. That's why I'm asking about the synthetic full. Is it necessary with only two restore points?

James

[DGrinev]

James,

It's not necessary but an option you can consider to implement.
You can leave the job without periodic fulls at all in conjunction with Health checks every month.
Please read the existing thread called "How often do I need a full backup" it might help you decide.

Thanks!

[foggy]

These are forever incrementals. That's why I'm asking about the synthetic full. Is it necessary with only two restore points?

Forever incremental and synthetic fulls are somewhat mutually exclusive parameters - once you enable synthetic full, the job switches to a regular forward incremental method, without daily merge.

[EdgarRicharte]

We do 3 restore points for all our client offsites(forever incremental). And we turn on "Defragment and compact full backup file" every first monday of the month. If you have a smaller amount of backups you could do this weekly.

[JamesNT]

Thank you all for your assistance. I think for offsite backups with only two restore points, we will turn off synthetic fulls.

JamesNT