Incremental Backup & Replication without key backups

McHenry

My understanding is that the main difference between Incremental Backups and Incremental Replication is the storage otherwise the two are conceptually similar:

Incremental Backup => Remote storage
Incremental Replication => Host storage

Question 1:
The documentation for IB states:
"They are called continuous because you'll never export a full backup after the first one."
https://docs.xen-orchestra.com/delta_backups

Does the statement above apply to IR too?

Question 2:
Key backups are recommended to ensure chain health.
"This is important because on rare occasions a backup can be corrupted"
https://docs.xen-orchestra.com/delta_backups#key-backup-interval

If a Health Check is performed after every 20 IR backups is there still the need for a key backup as the health check should identify any chain corruption?

olivierlambert

Q1. Yes. IB & IR share the same principle.
Q2. Key backups are a plus to be on the safe side, but it's not the only way to do it. You also have backup health check, as you suggested. To me, it depends on the criticality of your data. To me, health check after 20 IR isn't bad but it's really a "personal" choice