Active or Synthetic full with cloud?

[SteJw74]

Hi all,

I'm backing up a large (30tb) physical NAS to performance tier with a 30 day retention, and any files older than 14 days going to capacity (cloud) tier.

I have set it up to run a monthly backup, which archives for 12 months, and and a yearly backup, which archives for 7 years.

So when it kicks off it's going to run an active full to begin, and then it's going to run incrementals until the first Sunday of the next month, when it will run a monthly.

My question is should that monthly be active full or synthetic full?

I would prefer to go with synthetic but when the active full goes to the cloud, the next synthetic full will have to work across the cloud to create itself, which I'm not sure is ideal. I'm new to backing up to the cloud and associated behaviours.

Any and all advice much appreciated.

thanks,

SW

[PetrM]

Hi Steven,

The method of periodic full creation is transparent for the capacity tier whether it is "active" or "synthetic" because data from inactive chain only can be offloaded according to Move policy. You should opt for an appropriate backup method depending on suggestions given on this page of our best practices guide.

However, I believe you may consider NAS backup job and to use an object storage as an archive repository to keep older file versions.

Thanks!

[SteJw74]

Hi Petr,

thanks for that info i wasn't aware that active chains cannot offload, but of course it makes sense.

Thanks also for the archive repository method info it is something to be considered.

I will go and re-consider all options and plan from there.

kind regards,

Steven