cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Backup Exec 2014 Deduplication folder old files

jgolvano
Not applicable

We have recently upgraded from Backup Exec 2012 to Backup Exec 2014 and  over the last week our deduplication storage has been getting full when in the past we used to have a few terabytes free.

I have run the garbage collection commands a few times and this clears up some data but it eventually gets full again and the amount of data being backed up has not increased that much from when we were doing it with 2012.

What's even wors is that we have had to change the expiration on the full backups from 6 to 3 weeks and still running out of space!

Looking at the "\BackupExecDeduplicationStorageFolder\data" I can see thousands of files dating back to over a year ago when we first started using deduplication in BE 2012 (when the maximum expiry is 3 weeks), is this normal? Looks to me like the upgrade from 2012 to 2014 missed a few files.

As I undesrtand, the deduplication engina was changed from 2012 to 2014 (from PureDisk to the one used by NetBackup) but the upgrade didn't seem to do any "conversion" of the deduplication files or folder, is that how it's supposed to be?

Is there any way to fully "clean" the deduplication folder?

Sorry for all the questions, just need some clarification from the experts here...

 

 

5 REPLIES 5

pkh
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified

What are the file extensions of the thousands of files that you are talking about?  These could be the "containers" for the backup sets and not the backup sets themselves.

In the BE console, do you see backup sets in the dedup folders that should be deleted?  Have you tried right-clicking on them and selecting expire.  This will expire them and cause them to be removed by DLM.

MusSeth
Level 6
Employee Accredited

In backup exec it will not delete the Full backups unless the dependent sets are expired, make sure you have the right retension set for incrementals or diffrentials backups, as far as old backup sets are concerned  please try to expire them manually and let DLM take care of it, if thy are still not getting cleared you can consider creating the registry key as per the article http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH187957, this registry key applies to BE 2014 aswell,

 

set the registry and DLM process hopefully it should clear the files.

 

hope this resolves your issue, if still facing an issue please contact Symantec Techincal support and get a support case created for the same

pkh
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified
If you use the setting that is predominantly advised, you may end up with no backup set to restore. See the warning in the document below, under "Allow Backup Exec to delete all expired backup sets" which is equivalent to this setting http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO99585

MusSeth
Level 6
Employee Accredited

technote does mention EXPIRED backup sets and not all backup sets, the backup sets with retension will still be there.

pkh
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified

I said, "... you may end up with no backup set  to restore ... "