Synametrics Technologies

The versioning in Syncrify is nice & simple (keep the last X deltas in the event a previous version needs to be restored purging them FIFO) but I'm in need of a more effcient method to store long term archives. Yes I could set versions to keep at 730 and backing up daily would result in 2 years but that would require a ridiculous amount of space. What would be nice is if Syncrify had a more tiered approach instead of linear. Couldn't a series of delta files be merged into consolidated sub deltas? Or worst case build a complete file as of a certain historical date & store that? The goal being to have every backup for recent X days as it is now but also ARCHIVE copies at historical periods such as monthly, quarterly, yearly type thing. Ideally those could be configurable but great ot have something. As it stands now I'm looking to backup the syrncify backup folder then purge in-between dates to at least have something available for historical purposes but it's far from ideal. Thanks

Bill,

You can achive that right now but requires some manual work. Check http://web.synametrics.com/syncrify-manual-restore.htm . This method allows you to restore files to a USB drive or another location on the system. You can run this restore on-demand once in a while to create an archive.

What do you think?

Thanks for the response. I had forgotten about that client restore feature, I figured I'd just copy the user's backup folder if needed then restore directly at the client. As handy as that is to do an "offline" restore, I'm not sure it simplifies making tiered archives as I desribed unless I'm not understanding your suggestion. I get that it rebuilds the file from the deltas if needed but beyond that not sure how it helps. For one I'm talking something automated that doesn't require manual effort. If it can be done from command line & scheduled I suppose it could be automated but not sure of the benefit over say just copying the data directly (again aside from it merging the deltas if needed) or even running syncrify client to backup daily to another server. To clarify what I'm trying to achieve isn't to have unencrypted copies of the users' data saved somewhere but to be able to restore files going back further without the wasted space of having excessive Max Versions set.

Perhaps an example would help:
Outlook.pst48_1153975337_8804_synver
Outlook.pst49_1153975337_8804_synver
...
Outlook.pst.56_1223050281_9331_synver
Outlook.pst.57_1223050281_9331_synver
..
Outlook.pst.77_1223050281_9331_synver
Outlook.pst

I have versions going back from 48 to 77 plus the original for a total of 30 "Max versions" set.  It's backing up twice a day so I could restore up to 15 days back choosing 1 of 2 copies per day.  It would be nice if those 30 copies were distributed further back by having them be days, weeks, months, years instead of "backups". I get that complicates things but it should be possible by having syncrify server stagger the deltas even if it means merging deltas and/or rebuilding the original file as needed even if temporarily.  The result would be the ability to still only have 30 versions but instead of just 15 days (backing up 2x a day) that those 30 versions could go back much futher. For example, every backup for the last day, one daily going back 1 week, weekly going back a month, monthly going back a year & yearly going back X years or to the original/1st backup.  In my case I'd end up with 2 + 7 + 4 + 12 + 2 or 27 versions and be able restore back 2 years which under the current method would require 730 versions. As I said even if an entire archive copy of the file was kept for the older versions odds are it'd use less space than 730 deltas :) But ideally instead of full copies deltas would be better.

Are deltas incremental or differential? In other words to restore Outlook.pst48_1153975337_8804_synver which is 30 versions ago is every delta between needed & merged in order? I didn't figure they were relative to the most recent as that'd require recreating the deltas with each backup.  It would seem merging deltas by date range would work otherwise always keep full copy of oldest file then have the archive deltas be relative to that & the recent deltas as they are.

Anyway sorry for such a long response but it's a lot to cover. :)  In the meantime my plan is to schedule daily backups/copies of the Syncrify backups tree so that I can have daily snapshots of every user's backups for a given day & purge those tar's in a tiered fashion but won't have the space to keep 27 versions doing it that way lol
Thanks,
Bill

BTW I got 2 work-arounds that are not ideal but seem to accomplish at least partially what I'm looking for.

One is to setup multiple profiles in the client. Since each profile can have different schedule & versioning I can set the 2 profiles in such a way that one is the "daily" backup with the recent backups & the other "archive" backups which are less frequent so versions expire more into the past. In other words if main profile backs up daily & has 30 versions it'll have every day for the past month. If second profile backs up weekly & 30 versions it'll have the last 2.5 years of versions.  It will waste bandwidth sending the same files multiple times & will waste space on the servers storing the same files multiple times but it at least gets me closer to my goal.

The alternate method which is cleaner in that it doesn't requite anything special on the client side & saves all the duplicate traffic sending the same files is to backup the Syncrify Data folder. If I back that up weekly with the same 30 versions it'll result in 2.5 years of backups. Granted it could be scripted even with tar but it'd need to be weighed on the benefits of delta sync's vs the overhead in doing so vs just tarballing the Data tree. (Guessing syncrify daemon needs to be stopped during backup to ensure nothing changes..)

So ideally this could be integrated in Syncrify to avoid these workarounds but in the meantime at least there are options.

Hi,
Now that the new GUI is out & you have tons of free time (LOL as if) I wanted to bump this Feature Request.  This is mostly a server-side feature to manage backup data & usage, but client side GUI would need to have the options for the user eventually. One of the biggest shortcomings of Syncrify at this point is space utilization to maintain adequate long term versioning so it'd be nice to see this worked on or at least discussed to get the best approach hashed out & a roadmap.
Thanks,
Bill