BE 2010 Dedupe files (a LOT)

[digitlman77]

I've been running de-dupe B2D for a few months now, and I've got over 13K+ files in the dedupe folder.

That seems high, since I have the rentention for my full and diff backups at 1 week each for overwrite and append.

I have my media overwrite options set to "overwrite recycled media...".

In looking at the dedupe folder, a majority of the media is showing as "overwriteable".

I feel this many files is slowing down performance.

Thoughts?

[digitlman77]

Well, I retired a bunch of media files that were over a month old and showing no data, then deleted them.  I rebooted the server, then ran the manual garbage collection. 

I'm also defragging the OS drive.

I've looked, but I cannot see any info about defragging the deduplication folder.  In my case, it's a LUN off my SAN.   Is this OK to defrag?   If so, should I use Windows defragger or 3rd party (Defraggler in my case)?

[teiva-boy]

So BE2010 R2 just came out, and it fixed dozens of serious issues with the dedupe option.  Not to mention in my minimal testing, I'm seeing better dedupe rates too.

If I were to defrag that volume...  I'd feel a lot more comfortable if it were done with the services stopped, or at least with no jobs running at the time, and that includes maintenance tasks too.  The tough part about the maintenance tasks, is you dont know when they run!

[digitlman77]

If I do a 2010 RTM + latest updates ---> 2010 R2, I know that I am *supposed* to upgrade all the agents.  I am going to assume that in doing so, I'll have to reboot every server I upgrade, which is not a task I want to do at the moment. 

Would I be able to run 2010 R2 without upgrading the agents?  I was able to run 2010 RTM for a while with 12.5 agents.  It worked - they just complained until I was able to upgrade them.

[teiva-boy]

It would be ideal if you upgraded the agents.  But not required.  So you can run with an R2 server, and regular BE2010 agents.  But upgrade them sooner rather than later as there are reasons for R2 coming out...

[pkh]

You would need to re-boot the media server and all remote servers after they are upgraded to BE2010 R2.

[Hemant_Jain]

Yes, you should upgrade the remote agents, if you use Direct access for those clients, otherwise you will not get the benefit of issues fixed in Backup Exec 2010 R2.