Try to use SP to backup remote servers.

1. Can we perform a full backup locally (at remote site), then ship it to the local server, then the remote server continue the incremental backup pointing to the local server storage ?

2. Understand SP can combine multiple incremental into one, but can it combine the full backup with incremental to form a full backup ?

3. If SP can combine full backup with incremental to form a full backup, can we specify file retention policy so that it wont keep everything from day one, but only the number of days we wanted to retend ? Objective is not to run a full backup over WAN regularly because it is not practical.

Many thanks.

A1) Yes, you can do that.  After performing the full backup, pause the backup job and the edit it to change its destination (if necessary) and then un-pause it when you want it to continue making incrementals.

A2) Yes.  Combining incrementals is automatically done for you by ImageManager.  However, if you want to combine a base and one or more incrementals into a new base you can do this as well using the Backup Image Tool wizard, so it is a manual process (not automatic).

A3)  Regularly generating new fulls by combining existing fulls with new incrementals takes a lot of time and resources (disk I/O, memory, cpu, and perhaps also network bandwidth if the images aren't local).  We recommend that users instead use a "Continuous Incremental" job type for this purpose, such that the only images that are written over the network are incrementals (hence optimally small), and manage the destination image repository using ImageManager.

Just try to understand a bit more about how the 'continuous incremental' job type.

When I create a backup job of 'continuous incremental', looks like it will perform a FULL backup the first time, then subsequent incremental.

Do 'continuous incremental' has file retention policy, if not, that means I have to keep all files forever, which I will end up keeping files that we dont need ??

Great question!  You'll notice that when you create a Continous Incremental job, that the GUI tells you that such a job will require the use of the ImageManager tool.  ImageManager is a deceptively simple tool (well, it's simple to set up, but its underlying functionality is complex) which you can point at a directory of image files for automated maintenance.  ImageManager will automatically clean up older image files for you, collapsing them together.  The setup installer for ImageManager is installed at the time you install ShadowProtect - just check your ShadowProtect programs group on your start menu.  Also, when you install ImageManager, make sure that you specify a password at install time (don't just leave the default "0" password in the ImageManager setup wizard's password page).  When you run the ImageManagerClient.exe GUI, you need to use the menu item to connect to server (usually localhost) which you wish to manage.  When connecting, specify the same password that you set at install time.  After you are connected, create a new policy, and point it to a local directory that contains the image files you want to manage.  You can point it to a UNC/network path as well (as opposed to a local path), but in that case you'll need to make sure that the NT Service account used by the ImageManager NT Service has access to that UNC path.  I typically suggest users leave the default settings in the new policy dialog and simply specify the path to the files they want to manage.

Here's another post on this subject with a nice pic that helps to illustrate how the collapses tie the various files together in such a way that the lengths of the chain from any file back to the base are optimized (minimized) and hence the amount of data that must be processed to access data (for restore or mount) for a given point-in-time is also minimal:

http://forum.storagecraft.com/Community/forums/p/171/491.aspx#491

The pic is a little out-of-date because it is missing the "Synthetic/Collapse Monthly Incremental" files that are created, but at least it helps to explain the basic idea.