Question :
I know it is possible to set up a new database instance on a new server, using a full backup that has been prepared. This is useful for several things, not least if your server has failed completely; however, our full backups are very big, so I’m looking into using incremental backups instead.
This leads to an interesting question, though: it seems, for the prepare to work, I need to do it on the server that has been backed up – not a problem with a full backup, but the instructions in Percona’s Incremental Backup page say that when you prepare the incremental backups, you actually add them to the full backup, which means that either the backups can only be restored to the system where they originated, or you have to give up the advantage of incremental backups, both of which sounsa almost useless to me. Is that really the case or am I missing something?
Edit
To clarify my question: Can I restore a full backup + incremental backups to a new server? IOW, if I have a weekly full backup and several incremental backups, then lose the original server and have to build a new one, will I be able to use xtrtabackup --prepare ... without the original binlogs etc, so I can install the backups?
Answer :
that is normal, when the databases are to big for a full backup regularly, you make full backups in a certain period, and have only the incremental, to restore it to a day you want, which is in my opinion,a plus of the incremental backups.
the incremental backups are faster and smaller.
Usually when you reach that point, you should consider switching to replication as your backup strategy.
you can implement a failover, if needs arise.