Subversion: dump backup, do I need incremental backups?

Question

I'm a subversion noob. I was plannig to take backups from the repo using this command:

svnadmin dump C:\Repositories\Dev > D:\backups\repo_dev.bak

My intention is to put this into Scheduled Task (Windows Server 2008) and run this on daily or weekly basis. Can I use this command only (old backup is replaced by the new one) or do I need incremental backups separately? Or hotcopy backups?

Answer 1

You can do either a full dump or an incremental. The chief problem with an incremental is that several backups are needed to reconstruct the data. A full dump is a stand alone all-inclusive data set.

Which one you choose depends on several factors:

1. how big the dumps are
2. how fast the repository changes
3. how reliable the repository storage system is
4. availability requirement for the system during backup
5. how long an outage is tolerable in case the repository dies
6. how conscientiously the backups are done
7. probably several other factors (it's late)