Backup and recovery methods

Storware Backup & Recovery supports several backup and recovery methods. This section provides a brief overview of how they work.

Backup

Full backup

A full backup creates a complete copy of all selected data.

Each full backup is independent and does not require previous backups during recovery. The first backup of a protected source is always a full backup.

Incremental backup

An incremental backup transfers only the data that has changed since the previous backup.

In Storware Backup & Recovery, incremental backups are generally stored as deltas. The exception is the Citrix XVA image backup strategy, which uses differential backups.

If the backup destination does not support synthetic backups, recovery requires the initial full backup and all subsequent incremental backups.

Some backup strategies require source snapshots to be retained as checkpoints for subsequent incremental backups.

If no incremental schedule is defined, only full backups are performed and snapshots required specifically for incremental processing are not retained.

Synthetic backup

A synthetic backup combines the initial full backup with subsequent incremental changes into a complete backup image on the backup destination.

This removes the need to reconstruct the entire backup chain during recovery and can significantly reduce recovery time.

Incremental backups stored on a synthetic destination are displayed as Synthetic in the backup list.

Synthetic backup destinations are required for forever incremental backup and Instant Restore.

Restore

Restore to the source

Restores the selected backup by creating a new instance of the protected object on the source platform.

Restore to the node

Restores raw backup data to a selected directory on a Storware Backup & Recovery node.

This is useful for inspecting, processing, or manually transferring backup data.

Instant Restore

Instant Restore starts a virtual machine directly from backup data exposed from a synthetic backup destination.

Because the VM does not need to be fully restored before startup, recovery can take seconds instead of minutes or hours.

Where supported, storage live migration can move the VM data to the target storage while the VM is running.

Instant Restore instances are visible in the Mounted Backups view.

Mounted backups

Mounted backups expose backup data temporarily without performing a full restore.

File-level restore

File-level restore mounts an image-based backup and allows its file system to be browsed from the web UI.

For large data transfers, access directly from the node, for example over SSH, is recommended.

Sharing backups over iSCSI

A backup disk can be exposed over iSCSI and mounted on a remote system.