Resurrecting this a bit, just curious if anything has been thought off / 
changed, plus some ideas...

>On Monday 08 June 2009 02:18:58 James Harper wrote:
>> > In thinking about this a bit more, it seems like what you really want
>>
>> is a
>>
>> > VirtualFullCopy job.  I would be reasonably inclined to accept
>>
>> something like
>>
>> > that (it is simple and clear) and would do a Virtual Full but mark it
>>
>> as a
>>
>> > Copy job, which means that the Volumes could be offsite and would not
>>
>> be used
>>
>> > in subsequent backups.
>>
>> Perfect.
>
>Yes, but unfortunately I spoke too soon.
>
>>
>> Would you want a new level called VirtualFullCopy, or an additional flag
>> somewhere?
>
>We should think about this some more.  Perhaps we could come up with a way to
>mark a Job offsite rather than as a Copy.  Something like that would fit much
>better with the current direction we are taking.  It might be something like
>your proposed Pool flag, but that is problematic from several stand points:

I like this idea, it's pretty much the goal we want, just trying to find 
differing ways to see it done. The reason the Pool option appeals to me over 
this, is you can turn on a single pool in the restore in theory, and have 
access to your "pool" of offsite backups, or even less speedy alternate site 
backups (possible tiers of capabilities of speed / accessibility).

>
>1. It requires a database change.

Agreed, having a pool not considered for normal (virtual) backup functions 
would need an additional binary flag. Like an archive flag or similar 
definition.

>
>2. It assumes (I think) that the Pool is used for only one type of Volume,
>which is not currently the case, and if we made it so, it would vastly
>complicate life for small users who use only the Default Pool.

I would disagree here, I don't see this being anything but an add on for those 
that would use it, defaulting to non intrusive all onsite local backups unless 
configured otherwise.

>
>Some way of using current DB fields would be preferable -- or simply do a
>Virtual Full then a Copy job :-)

But this requires the virtual full job to be created, and then copied, and here 
is the important point, it still acts as a copy job, so you either must have a 
matching local original backup, or the copy will be promoted to the viable 
version, and we're right back where we started. This is not desirable in my 
case at least, and I believe others as well, as it would be very nice to be 
able to have an offsite current full backup, while the local backups are still 
based on an old full, and periodic differential / incremental backups to vastly 
conserve space, while having a viable recent complete offsite backup that is 
restorable as well. I guess the other option would be to have a completely 
separate offsite backup rotation, with copies of all differential/incremental 
backups, but that would greatly increase the required churn, when this feature 
could easily fill the role with much more efficiently with a few minor 
conceptual tweaks.

Copy jobs definitely have their place, especially for clone based backups 
requiring auditing, but that shouldn't discount the viability of an alternate 
solution for those of us looking more for storage efficiency than compliance.

For reference, it would save me hundreds/thousands of GB of storage per week, 
not to mention the much lower network usage / backup times each week currently 
running the completely separate full only backup sets currently in place to 
provide the non virtual version of this feature. As it stands now, I have to 
choose, either to have synthetic full backups each week, and keep copies 
locally, or I can have completely separate "offsite" backups each week, but 
they must be done in full separately, with cloned filesets, etc (not fun to 
maintain at all).

>
>
>Kern

-Blake

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