Backup Exec 2012 - Disk Space not reflecting free space correctly

[rdstack]

Greetings,

I started to run low on free space on one of my media servers so I started to delete a few 1-2 TB's backup sets for future backups. After I delete these sets, the stoarge does not reflect the amount I deleted. It is as if I did not delete the backup set. Besides picking the backup set and deleting it, is there something I need to do to free up that disk space?

Thanks,

Robert

[VJware]

Were the backup sets deleted from the actual storage or were they deleted from the Backup Exec's UI ?

[rdstack]

From the UI. I have no way, that I know of, knowing what to delete on the server based on the directory structure. I assumed, maybe wrongly, that I could delete the backup set in the UI, it would delete it from the disk to free up the space. Am I assuming wrongly? 

[VJware]

Nopes, when you delete the backup set from the UI, its catalog & actual physical file is also deleted.

Are you checking the free space status using windows explorer or within the UI itself ? If it does not show the correct free space from the UI, try recycling the Backup Exec services or inventory the storage itself.

[Sush---]

Yes. In BE 2012 deleting the backup sets from UI will also delete them from the actual physical location.

Have you restarted BE services after deleting the backup sets to see if they reflect the right number of free space available?

Try restarting BE services.

Thanks,

-Sush...

[Colin_Weaver]

Are you using Deduplication? 

If yes then because it is not a 1:1 relationship between the backup set and what is laid down inside the deduplication storage folder then you will not see a disk space gain when deleting the sets from the UI.

[rdstack]

Restarting the services did not help. The physical disk does not reflect the deletion of the backup set. It seems like the UI is not deleting the set from the disk. 

[rdstack]

We do have the deduplication option but I deleted the only backup set listed for one of our servers that was over 1TB and it did not reflect this space. There are no other backup sets for this server on the media server listed under backup sets.

Another "weird" issue is I cannot sort by server name or any other the other column names. Not sure if this is how it was programmed or if something is just wrong with my UI. I cannot sort by any of the columns listed below. 

Server, Resource, Backup Time, Backup Method, Storage, Expiration, Size......

[rdstack]

Well I am not sure what "occured" but all of a sudden the value changed and now it is showing the correct amount. It went from 800 GB's free to 13.8 TB's. Weird stuff for a Friday. 

Thanks to everyone for the help!

[Colin_Weaver]

If you are actually using dedup then any block/chunk of data held in the store will not be deleted just because you deleted one backup set as there could be another backup set needing the same block/chunk

Dedup has ways to identify chunks of data that have 0 backup sets associated and then do forms of garbage collection against them. This would not necessarily take place at the same time as any active jobs.

The relationship between the individual files located in a dedup folder and the backup sets is very complex. i.e. "Many chunks to one set and many sets to one chunk"

[rdstack]

Spoke too soon. The drive filled up and now I can't seem to clear any sets off to free up space.