Forum Discussion

Cupis's avatar
Cupis
Level 4
9 years ago

Large Catalog Cleanup

Hi Good Folk,

I am sure this is the umpteenth time that someone has posted this, but I wanted to confirm some things before I went to town on my Catalog Folders.

  • If I turn on Truncate Catalogs, the headers will remain, but the bulk of the data will be removed. This will mean I will still see that the backup occurred against the server, but you will not be able to browse the backup files until you catalog the media again?
  • Only catalog's created after "Truncate Catalog's" are switched on, will be truncated. So I will just need to deal with the space of the existing catalog files.
  • Apparently truncating will only occur after the database maintenance job runs, but this is not going to help me because of the point above.
  • I can manually delete any catalog files I want (preferebly the oldest) and it will just mean I need to catalog the media in order to restore from it?

So Im in a situation were my catalogs are 600gb, only with 220 files out of 15 500 files. so some files are sitting at 4gb..This does not make sense to me that the catalogs are that large? Surely thats not normal?

I am also not sure about the folder structure, while everything is hosted in lets say D:\Catalogs, I find that there is Catalog folder with some files in it, then another folder in there with the server name, with the bulk of the files and size, then another folder with in that one called catstore?

So D:\Catalogs\ServerNamer\catstore

where the bold is the bulk of the files, being *.fh

 

Your guys help is always appreciated

Regards

2010
Backup and Recovery
Backup Exec
Windows Server (2003-2008)
  • CraigV's avatar
    CraigV
    9 years ago

    The more you log in your job log, the larger the catalogs, so start by checking what option you selected there.

    You can also look at moving the Catalogs folder to another drive, but if it was my decision I'd simply remove the old catalog files, free up space, and then run a Catalog job on a tape you want to restore from in future.

    Thanks!

  • pkh's avatar
    pkh
    9 years ago

    Before you start moving your Catalog directory or deleting old catalog entries, you should check which files are the big files that are filling up the directory.  There may be a problem which is causing the Catalog directory to fill up.  If you just move the Catalog directory without solving this problem, the new disk will be filled up again.

    You should also plan on upgrading.  BE 2010 has already reached the end of engineering life, i.e. no more patches.

  • Colin_Weaver's avatar
    Colin_Weaver
    9 years ago

    Be very careful -  DLM activity against disk sets is directly linked to catalogs files.

     

    Delete the wrong thing manually and we wil probably stop reclaiming backup sets and you wil move you disk space issue to the backup target instead of the catalog location. 

     Bascially manually deleting content of the cataligs folder without guidance from support may put you into a condition where we cannot support issues wih DLM reclaims in your environment.

     

  • CraigV's avatar
    CraigV
    Moderator
    9 years ago

    The more you log in your job log, the larger the catalogs, so start by checking what option you selected there.

    You can also look at moving the Catalogs folder to another drive, but if it was my decision I'd simply remove the old catalog files, free up space, and then run a Catalog job on a tape you want to restore from in future.

    Thanks!

  • pkh's avatar
    pkh
    Moderator
    9 years ago

    Before you start moving your Catalog directory or deleting old catalog entries, you should check which files are the big files that are filling up the directory.  There may be a problem which is causing the Catalog directory to fill up.  If you just move the Catalog directory without solving this problem, the new disk will be filled up again.

    You should also plan on upgrading.  BE 2010 has already reached the end of engineering life, i.e. no more patches.

  • Cupis's avatar
    Cupis
    Level 4
    9 years ago

    Thanks all

     

    Any pointers on investigating the possible issue of the catalogs growing too big?

     

    As for the upgrading, yes we are planning to upgrade but we have a few instances that we need to upgrade and its turning to be a bit of a project along side usual work.

  • pkh's avatar
    pkh
    Moderator
    9 years ago

    Obviously, you should take a look at the file size of each of the files.

  • Cupis's avatar
    Cupis
    Level 4
    9 years ago

    ​Ok guys thanks for the response, Ill investigate into these catalogs and will post in here about that or ask questions If I have. I have managed to clear a little bit of space to buy me some time. I am going to just add the following confirmations in here, should others be looking through the forum. Since there were no disagreements I am going to assume them as correct.

    • If I turn on Truncate Catalogs, the headers will remain, but the bulk of the data will be removed. This will mean I will still see that the backup occurred against the server, but you will not be able to browse the backup files until you catalog the media again?
    • Only catalog's created after "Truncate Catalog's" are switched on, will be truncated. So I will just need to deal with the space of the existing catalog files.
    • Apparently truncating will only occur after the database maintenance job runs, but this is not going to help me because of the point above.
    • I can manually delete any catalog files I want (preferebly the oldest) and it will just mean I need to catalog the media in order to restore from it?

    Maybe I should add this, we switched on the truncating and forces a database maintenance job to run and we actually recovered space that way. So it seemed that it did truncating after we turned on the feature.

  • Colin_Weaver's avatar
    Colin_Weaver
    Moderator
    9 years ago

    Be very careful -  DLM activity against disk sets is directly linked to catalogs files.

     

    Delete the wrong thing manually and we wil probably stop reclaiming backup sets and you wil move you disk space issue to the backup target instead of the catalog location. 

     Bascially manually deleting content of the cataligs folder without guidance from support may put you into a condition where we cannot support issues wih DLM reclaims in your environment.

     

  • pkh's avatar
    pkh
    Moderator
    9 years ago
    He is running BE 2010 so DLM does not apply
  • Cupis's avatar
    Cupis
    Level 4
    9 years ago

    Hi Guys,

    Thought I would just add some feedback for Guys who come across this thread. 

    So the reason we have large Catalog files is that we backup volumes that contain +-45 million files. Simply put, more files = more catalog = larger catalog files.

    Thanks for the assistance everyone.

     

    Kind Regards,

    Stuart Wepener

  • CraigV's avatar
    CraigV
    Moderator
    9 years ago

    Cool, could you then close this off please?

    Thanks!