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Grayc's avatar
Grayc
Level 4
9 years ago

Removing Expired Backup Sets That Were Written To Tape

I recently upgraded our media servers (running Windows 2008 R2 OS) from BE2012 to BE15.

When I look at the backup sets, I see a long list of expired backup sets where the "Storage" column is identified as "Unknown."  Looking at the Properties for any one of them, I see that the backup set is encrypted which tells me the backup set was written to tape (we only encrypt backup sets when running a duplicate-to-tape job.)

My question is:  These backup sets were written first to disk then duplicated, with encryption, to tape and are now expired, why are they not being deleted from the BE database?  I looked at the dates on the backup sets and they go as far back as November 2013.  We do an annual backup set D2D2T that we retain for 1-year.  Upon creating a new annual set, the previously year's set is replaced.   How do I get rid of them?

Any help is great appreciated!

15
Backup and Recovery
Backup Exec
Configuring
Tip-How to
Troubleshooting
Windows Server (2003-2008)
  • pkh's avatar
    pkh
    9 years ago

    You have a couple of problems here and you should not mix them up.

    1) Unknown storage - These are probably orphaned catalog entries.  If you are sure that the tapes have been overwritten, you can either log a support with Symantec so that the engineer can remove these orphaned entries for you or follow the procedure in this comment.

    https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/delete-backup-sets-unknown-storage#comment-11127671

    2) You only expire disk backup sets.  The expiry of tape backup sets are controlled by media sets and not DLM.  After the tape backup sets expire, their catalog entries would only be deleted after the tape that they are on are overwritten.

    3) For disk backup sets, after they expire, they would only be deleted in the next DLM grooming cycle which is done every 4 hours.  If you upgrade to FP1, then the grooming cycle is done every hour. For BE 15, you can expire a disk backup set and these would be deleted immediately.

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  • CraigV's avatar
    CraigV
    Moderator
    9 years ago

    Hi,


    Read the documents on the links below and make sure that BE is configured correctly to remove the expired sets:

    https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/automated-disk-management-and-data-retention-backup-exec-dlm-or-data-lifecycle-management

    https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.HOWTO99585.html

    Thanks!

  • Grayc's avatar
    Grayc
    Level 4
    9 years ago

    CraigV,

    I read those documents and followed those instructions before posting my question.

    What backup sets I want to expire, does expire.  I guess my question should be:

    When a backup set has expired, why does it remain listed under a server's Backup Sets view?

    Is it just flagged as expired and the disk reclamation occurs when it needs to occur on the RAID?

    I keep wanting BE 15 to expire a backset and immediately reclaim the disk space on the RAID.  But it never seems to do that.  Instead the 5-TB worth of Expired old backup sets appears to not be recalculated under the Storage tab > Details view.  It still shows that I only have 2.7 TB available capacity on a 9.09 TB.  Since "expiring" those old backup sets, I restarted the media twice and yet there still was no change.

     

     

  • pkh's avatar
    pkh
    Moderator
    9 years ago

    You have a couple of problems here and you should not mix them up.

    1) Unknown storage - These are probably orphaned catalog entries.  If you are sure that the tapes have been overwritten, you can either log a support with Symantec so that the engineer can remove these orphaned entries for you or follow the procedure in this comment.

    https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/delete-backup-sets-unknown-storage#comment-11127671

    2) You only expire disk backup sets.  The expiry of tape backup sets are controlled by media sets and not DLM.  After the tape backup sets expire, their catalog entries would only be deleted after the tape that they are on are overwritten.

    3) For disk backup sets, after they expire, they would only be deleted in the next DLM grooming cycle which is done every 4 hours.  If you upgrade to FP1, then the grooming cycle is done every hour. For BE 15, you can expire a disk backup set and these would be deleted immediately.

  • Grayc's avatar
    Grayc
    Level 4
    9 years ago

    All,

    My problems are resolved!

    The old backup sets that filled up the RAID are now gone!  Yesterday, I set the expiration date on them for "07/23/2015 5:00:00 am"  and it worked like a charm!   :-)   I think I did not quite catch yesterday that the expiration methodology in the DLM only applied to backup sets on disk storage.  Guess that is an admittance to "Operator Head-space Syndrome!"

    As for the "Unknown" storage problem, I followed the directions in the document link provided and cleaned out the catalog folder followed by a restart of the Backup Exec services.  Those orphaned catalogs entries are now gone!

    Thank you all for you help!  Have a Great Day!