Add Cumulative/Differential option to Vault OOTB backup

[Anonymous]

Our organisation uses 3rd party backup tools for our 1.7TB Vault. But there remain occasions where the OOTB Vault backup/restore is useful, e.g. for migrating Prod data to Dev/Test environment with different hostnames.

A full OOTB Vault backup takes several days, so using the existing incremental backup feature is desirable. However, restoring multiple, incremental backups sequentially is a very slow process, and requires significant storage for each incremental (full database copy for each iteration).

Could a cumulative/differential backup be added as an option to OOTB Vault backup/restore, so that restore operation would only be Full+LatestCumulative, rather than Full+Incremental#1+Incremental#2+Incremental#3+......

It is understood that each cumulative/differential backup would take longer to complete than an incremental, however it would be significantly quicker (copy and validate a small portion of the entire file store) than having to run a full backup (copy and validate the entire file store).

The likely benefits to be realised are desirable;

1. Faster to restore than using several Incremental backups,

2. Less backup data storage accumulated, since each previous cumulative backup could be deleted,

3. After first full backup has been made, there is no further need to run full backup, which takes several days to complete for larger Vaults.

[ihayesjr]

@Anonymous ,

Thank you for posting this idea. The cumulative option looks interesting. If the OOTB backup had the cumulative option which merged the last full backup with the incremental backup in the same folder, the possibility of having too many files in the backup file store location could happen as it would not delete anything. How do you think this should be handled?

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your feedback, @ihayesjr.

The cumulative backup could be implemented in different ways, but it might be most efficient to re-use elements of the existing incremental backup feature. An example scheme:

DAY 1) Create full backup
DAY 2) Create Cumulative backup. This is the same as the current initial incremental backup. Like the present incremental backup, it is located in a separate, dated backup folder.
DAY 3) Create Cumulative backup. Again, this is the same as the current *initial* incremental backup. Like the present incremental backup, it is located in a separate, dated backup folder. Once existing automated backup validation step has completed, the previous cumulative backup folder gets automatically deleted.
DAY 4) Repeat DAY 3
DAY 5) Repeat DAY 3
And so on, until,
DAY X) At some point, perhaps prior to significant change, start the process again with DAY 1 Full backup.

That is, after the full backup is made, the cumulative backup simply repeats the existing *initial* incremental backup function, and then wipes any previous cumulative backup (after validation).

So, in answer to your question, I expect the online backup storage footprint could theoretically grow to [initial full backup + latest database + latest filestore]. However, I expect the full backup would be repeated at some stage (e.g. prior to configuration Change), perhaps months after the last full backup, which will 'reset' the online backup storage.