This was some time ago, but I found synthetic backups to be either 
irrelevant (due to restrictions on their applicability) or unusable (due 
to the occasional problems that seem to require new full backups) at my 
shop (v5.1).   That, and the last thing that my shop needed were more 
long tape-to-tape copies, caused me to quickly try and then scrap its 
use.   Increasing network capability and moving large data accumulations 
to the central site have helped my problem of long full backups.  Adding 
backup to disk or maybe VTL is another step to smooth our operations 
(and be able to feed more modern tape drives).

Thanks to everyone for the fine discussion of VTL in another thread!

cheers, wayne

markjessup at northwesternmutual.com wrote, in part,  on 2007-05-14 3:18 PM:
>
> I am curious if anyone is using the Synthetic Full Backup feature that 
> is provided with Netbackup now.  If people are using it, what issues 
> if any have you come across with this feature and what specific 
> workload have you applied this feature to?   Also, what benefits have 
> you seen ?   Thanks!
>