Performing Sybase Cumulative Incremental Backups

You can perform cumulative incremental backups on Sybase databases that are Sybase ASE 15.7 SP100 version or later.

A Sybase cumulative incremental backup contains the changed data from the last full backup. Cumulative incremental backups use less media and resources than full backups.

The following are advantages of cumulative incremental backups.

• You can rollforward a full backup of a database without having to back up the entire database.

• The recovery time is minimized because most of the changes are already applied.

• The software has tracked the changes that you need to recover the database with a minimal amount of logging.

• The backup size is smaller, especially for databases that contain large read-only tables.

• The backup performance is improved for database loads that have updates on a subset of database pages.

A cumulative backup is not supported for the following Sybase database types:

• The master database

• Proxy databases

• Temporary databases.

Before You Begin

• You must configure the Sybase database to maintain the list of pages that must be dumped.

  1. Use the sp_dboption system procedure to enable this option.

     Syntax

     sp_dboption dbname, 'allow incremental dumps', true
     

     Parameters

     The following table describes the parameters.

  Parameter	Description
  database_name	The name of the database that you want to use for the backup.
  option	The option that you want to set for the database. Use 'allow incremental dumps'.
  true	Use 'true' to set the feature.

  1. Perform a full backup. For more information, see Performing Sybase Full Backups.

Procedure

1. From the CommCell Browser, expand Client Computers > client > Sybase > instance.

2. Right-click the subclient and click Backup.

3. On the Backup Options for Subclient dialog box, select the backup type and job initiation:

   1. In the Backup Type section, select the Cumulative Incremental option.

   2. In the Job Initiation section, choose to run the backup now or schedule it.

      Note: If you selected Schedule, set up the schedule.

      For information on configuring a backup schedule, see Schedule Backups.

4. Click OK to close the Backup Options dialog box.