2.1 Block-Level Incremental Backup

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2 Overview : 2.1 Block-Level Incremental Backup

2.1 Block-Level Incremental Backup

This section describes the basic concepts of the block-level incremental backup referred to simply as an incremental backup. An incremental backup is a unique utility for BART.

An incremental backup provides a number of advantages when compared to using full backups:

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The amount of time required to produce an incremental backup is generally less than a full backup as modified relation blocks are saved instead of all full relation files of the database cluster.

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An incremental backup uses less disk space than a full backup taken in plain text format.

Note: If the full backup is taken in tar format, this saves disk space as well.

Generally, all BART features such as retention policy management apply to incremental backups as well as full backups. See Section 3.2.5 for information about retention policy management as applied to incremental backups.

2 Overview : 2.1 Block-Level Incremental Backup