Why Not All Incremental Backups Are Equal

Smarter Incremental Backups with ActiveProtect

Incremental backups are essential for modern data protection, enabling organizations to reduce storage overhead, shorten backup windows, and optimize network usage. While most IT teams are familiar with the concept, the way incremental backups are stored and processed varies dramatically between platforms, and these differences directly affect your recovery time, data reliability, and operational continuity.

Epis Technology helps businesses understand these nuances and deploy the right Synology-backed strategy to achieve fast, resilient, and secure enterprise backup performance.

The Limitations of Traditional Incremental Backup Methods

Conventional backup solutions such as Veeam and similar legacy platforms typically rely on this structure:

1. One full backup

2. A growing chain of incremental backups

During recovery, the system reconstructs data by merging the full backup with each incremental backup in sequence. While functional, this model introduces several major challenges:

Heavy, Slow Restorations

Rebuilding a restore image across a long incremental chain increases CPU utilization and greatly slows down recovery, especially for large datasets.

High Risk of Corruption

If one incremental file becomes corrupted, the entire chain can fail, putting recovery at risk and undermining business continuity.

More Administrative Overhead

IT administrators must constantly monitor incremental chains, enforce retention rules, and maintain synthetic or periodic full backups just to preserve data integrity.

To compensate, organizations often lean on:

• Synthetic full backups, which consolidate incrementals into a new restore point

• Active full backups, which reset the chain

Yet both options introduce operational pain points:

• Synthetic fulls require heavy computing and detailed scheduling.

• Active fulls impose a high I/O load on production systems.

• Storage consumption rises without strong deduplication.

This is where businesses often struggle, especially those scaling rapidly, operating hybrid environments, or maintaining multiple sites with limited IT staff.

Epis Technology frequently encounters these challenges when assessing legacy backup deployments for new clients.

A Modern Approach with Synology ActiveProtect Powered by Epis Technology

Synology ActiveProtect redefines incremental backups by transforming every backup into a synthetic-full equivalent restore point without the heavy resource usage that traditional platforms require.

Epis Technology implements and optimizes ActiveProtect across businesses to maximize efficiency, recovery speed, and long-term resilience.

How ActiveProtect Fixes the Limitations of Traditional Systems

ActiveProtect uses Synology’s block-level deduplication engine to capture only modified blocks and automatically integrate them into a self-contained, immediately restorable backup image. There are no chains to manage, no multi-file merge operations, and no dependency on older incremental data.

In practice, this means:

• Every backup = a complete restore point

• No chain corruption risk

• Fast, low-overhead recovery

• Significant storage savings

This architecture eliminates the traditional distinction between full vs. incremental backups and replaces it with a single, streamlined model.

Key Benefits Delivered by Epis Technology Using Synology ActiveProtect

1. Instant, Simplified Restorations

Epis Technology configures ActiveProtect so every backup can be restored independently.
No chain reconstruction. No dependency on older incrementals.
This dramatically accelerates disaster recovery and minimizes downtime.

2. Stronger Data Integrity and Ransomware Protection

ActiveProtect eliminates weak links in the chain and includes:

• Version-level immutability

• WORM (Write Once Read Many) protections

• Air-gapped offline backup support

• Automated integrity checks

Epis Technology ensures these are implemented according to regulatory and business requirements.

3. Deduplication for Storage Efficiency

With enterprise environments generating terabytes of data, Epis Technology leverages ActiveProtect’s source-side and global deduplication to reduce storage use and backup windows critical for hybrid and multi-site environments.

4. Lower Operational Overhead

No more tracking incremental chains.
No synthetic full scheduling.
No backup chain babysitting.
Epis Technology centralizes everything into one unified Synology ActiveProtect management system.

Meeting Modern Enterprise Demands with Epis Technology + Synology

Today’s IT environment demands:

• High-performance backup systems

• Zero-trust security

• Faster, verifiable recovery

• Multi-site visibility

• Budget-friendly storage optimization

Epis Technology designs tailored deployments of Synology ActiveProtect that meet these requirements and integrate seamlessly with existing Synology NAS environments, Active Backup for Business, and hybrid-cloud workflows.

By eliminating the complexity and fragility of traditional incremental methods, Epis Technology enables organizations to adopt an enterprise-grade backup strategy that is simpler, safer, and significantly more reliable.

About Epis Technology

Epis Technology provides enterprise IT infrastructure, Synology consulting, large-scale storage solutions, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace backups, and fully managed data protection services. Through Synology ActiveProtect and advanced hybrid-cloud strategies, Epis Technology helps organizations achieve resilient, scalable, and secure data protection, ensuring fast recovery, strong cybersecurity posture, and long-term business continuity.