The quick answer is that it's too hard.

In order to do an in-file incremental, you'd have to have intimate knowledge of 
the each kind of filesystem structure (ufs, vxfs, ext, ext3, etc).

By doing it at the file level, rather than the block level, the OS takes care 
of all that for you.   

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu 
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of Jorge 
Fábregas
Sent: Saturday, June 06, 2009 1:21 PM
To: VERITAS-BU AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: [Veritas-bu] In-File Delta Technology

Hello everyone,

I'm still learning Netbackup (got around 1.5 years working with it) and I'm 
wondering... Is there a way to perform incremental backups using in-file 
delta technology (backup only changes within a file)?  I've seen a lot of 
features/options for Netbackup but I have never seen this...If indeed there 
isn't ...why isn't this type of ESSENTIAL technology part of Netbackup?

Just as an aside, I recently started backing up a server that runs "MS Virtual 
Server" that has around 9 guests...I back them up at night (obviously after 
shutting down the guests) and I know 5 of those 9 guests seldomly change but 
as you can imagine...because the timestamp on the virtual-hard-disks 
change ...they're backed up COMPLETELY.  The end result: I'm almost 
performing a FULL backup every day even though it's an incremental 
schedule   :(  

I'll appreciate your feedback. 

Thanks!

All the best,
Jorge

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