Synthetic Full Backups? So What?
There has been a lot of talk about Synthetic Backups lately, and especially a lot of bitter complaining that one of my competitors promised it to his users but hasn’t delivered it. I’m going to use Synthetic Backups as a club now, to beat up that competitor.
What is Synthetic Full Backup? Well, it’s something that I’ve had in my software for nearly two decades. Many years ago when I was young and ignorant I wrote the first online backup software using technology similar to what my competitor uses now – rsync, an open source technology that was never intended to be used like this, and has not kept up with vast changes in the needs of end users.
After my software had been in use for about five years, and customers had amassed large backups and were doing a significant number of disaster recoveries, I began to get complaints about unacceptably slow restore rates. Customers complained. Service providers complained.
I traced the problem to how I was storing and cataloging files on the Remote Backup server. My original incorrect assumptions about how people would use online backup, and my ignorance about the young industry had caused a big problem.
My competitor, who is just now five years old, is in the same place I was eighteen years ago, facing a problem caused by the ignorance of youth. [There’s the first blow.]
I had to spend a lot of money and time on a total rewrite of the software to solve that problem. It was a tough lesson to learn. In the rewrite I replaced my old file transfer and storage engine with a radical new design that could support Synthetic Backups. Today I am still using that same design, with updates of course.
OK YOU POMPOUS OLD FART! WHAT IS IT ALREADY!? Synthetic Backups are (usually) full backups that are built out of pieces of previous incremental and full backups already on the server without the need to re-send data to the Server. It saves a lot of time on restore and saves space on the Server.
My competitor whines, rightly so, that giving this important feature to his users is difficult. I can tell you, he’s right about that! But he also incorrectly claims that in order to support Synthetic Backups he will have to send the encryption key to the server, to have the server do the work of building the Synthetic Backup. But he can’t do that and still maintain security. (This guy is adorable!) I solved that problem, too – many years ago. [THWACK!] Ah, the blissful ignorance of youth!
If you properly think out your software design, and if you have a good knowledge of how online backup is used in the real world, Synthetic Backup is a REALLY simple thing to do. I was actually surprised when I found out this adorable newcomer to my industry didn’t have it.
This makes me wonder, “What ELSE hasn’t he properly thought through [OUCH!]?” What other terrible mistakes have been made out of shier lack of experience? [BOOM] And finally, when are his youthful mistakes, many yet to be discovered, going to cause a serious data loss for an end user?
Editor’s Note: (5 Feb 2010) Well, I was right to suspect other problems. I have since discovered that this guy’s Client installer installs a Web Server on ALL CLIENT MACHINES, and that it will answer on port 6060 to standard HTTP requests from the Internet. Amazing. This leaves all his end users vulnerable to data loss through any number of exploits you can find just by Googling.
These unknowns should strike fear into the hearts of his service providers, who should all run screaming to my website and buy correct software written out of the twenty three years’ experience of many thousands more service providers than he has.
I’ll let that be the final blow. For now. I’m going back to the old folks’ home now. They don’t like it when I escape and get off my meds.
[Follow-up article: Synthetic Full Backups Redux…]
Rob Cosgrove is the President of Remote Backup Systems and founder of the Online Backup Industry. http://remote-backup.com
