Hello
I use backup exec 2016 with a 10T disk (deduplication).
I need to make room for other important backups.
I expired and deleted two jobs and so far has not cleared space.
after you expired the backup sets, the 10t volume did not free up space.
can you help me?
Manual space reclamation for Deduplication Storage Folder in Backup Exec 2012 and above.
https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.100008765
Reclaiming space in a Backup Exec Deduplication Folder
https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.100001882
from command prompt -> BE Install Path -> run the command
crstats.exe --verbose --convert-size
Check the space needs compaction size. If it is quite large, run the below command to free up some space.
crcontrol.exe --compactstart 100 0 1
To monitor compaction command - crcontrol.exe --compactstate
If the space needs compaction is not much, then you will need to follow the article to reclaim space by deleting Backup Sets. When Backup sets are deleted , 2 rounds of Queue Processing needs to be run to show the updated results (by default they run automatically in 12 hours interval 12:20 and 00:20) but you can trigger it by running crcontrol.exe --processqueue (run this 2 times and you can monitor this by running crcontrol.exe --processqueueinfo. When the Status shows Busy: NO and Pending : NO then queue processing is completed). You can then rerun the crstats.exe --convert-size command to check space occupied within containers
Note : Due to the nature and way Deduplication algorithms work, if the same data is referenced by other backup sets, then even if you get rid of a few Backups sets it may not show that much of space release. More the dedupe ratio, more the number of sets required to be deleted to regain the space.
FYI - Dedupe queue processing improvements have happened over the years BE 2012 -> BE 2014,15,16 and now with BE 20, 20.1 they are even better.
Hi Gurvinder,
You are handing out this information, regarding the "crcontrol.exe --compactstart 100 0 1", which is great, as it really seems to work in clearing space on full deduplication volumes. However, if Veritas included this information in its Best Practices and manual clean up process documentation, in the first place, people could avoid getting into this mess.
Regards,
David.
