Barracuda Backup provides several different methods to protect data. Barracuda Backup Agents for Windows, macOS, and Linux are used to protect physical servers or virtual machines (VMs) where image-level backups are not supported. Image-level backups for VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V protect VMs via the use of snapshots. Network File-System backups can use the CIFS, SMB, NFS, or SSHFS protocols to protect data on network-attached storage.
Barracuda Backup uses an incremental forever method of protecting data. Every initial backup of an agent, virtual, or network-attached data source is a full backup. After the initial full backup, every backup thereafter is an incremental backup, where only the changes to the dataset are captured and transferred to the Barracuda Backup device. Barracuda Backup automatically keeps track of what the dataset or server looked like during each backup, even if the changes are minimal. When a restore is initiated, Barracuda Backup automatically rebuilds the dataset or server to what it looked like at the exact time of the backup, otherwise known as a synthetic full backup.
The exception to the incremental forever method is with Microsoft database applications like Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange Server. The file systems and system state backups for Microsoft Exchange and SQL Servers are incremental forever, while the database backups rotate between scheduled Full or Complete backups and Incremental or Log backups.
Figure 1. Incremental Forever Backup Method.
Figure 2. Microsoft Exchange & SQL Server Database Backup.
