Home > Storage > PowerScale (Isilon) > Product Documentation > Data Protection > Dell PowerScale SyncIQ: Architecture, Configuration, and Considerations > Differential replication or target aware sync
Note: Running an initial replication again after the source and target cluster association is broken affects not only bandwidth and cluster resources. It also creates ballooning snapshots on the target cluster for snapshots outside of SyncIQ re-replication. A Differential Replication eliminates these concerns.
The term “Differential Replication” is also referred to as “Target Aware Sync,” “Target Aware Initial Sync,” and “Diff Sync.” All these terms are referencing a Differential Replication.
A Differential Replication compares the source and target directories to identify any differences and only replicates data that does not exist in the target directory. If a data difference between a specific file’s source and target copies is found, the entire file is replicated from the source to the target. However, files may bypass the comparison process and proceed with a complete transfer for any of the following conditions:
The Target Aware Initial Sync feature, available only using the CLI. To enable target-aware initial synchronization, use the following command:
isi sync policies modify <policy_name> --target-compare-initial-sync=true