The following figures explain the concept of synthetic backup and virtual full backup. They show how a synthetic full backup or a virtual full backup is created from a full backup and any number of incremental backups.
Figure 72 Synthetic backup
Figure 72 on page 259 shows how a synthetic full backup is created. The Restore Media Agent (RMA) reads the full backup from the backup medium, which can be a tape or a disk. The data is sent to another RMA, which reads the incremental backups from the file library and consolidates the data. The consolidated data is then sent to the Backup Media Agent (BMA), which writes the synthetic full backup to the backup medium, which can, again, be a tape or a disk.
Later on, the synthetic full backup is typically merged with subsequent incremental backups into a new synthetic backup. The procedure can be repeated indefinitely, either after each incremental backup, or at a desired interval.
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