Disk backups - automatic removal of expired files

[Cat_Adams]

I have a large disk storage that I do my backup to disk on then from there, backup to tape.  I have an expiration date of 5 days.  Question,  what program does this cleanup and why does it work sometime and not other times??  Also,  is there a place that you can set this program to run (specific date)?

Thanks much

Cathy

[pkh · Accepted solution]

Disk storage is managed by DLM and it grooms the disk storage every 4 hours. See this blog and my article https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/blogs/data-lifecycle-management-be-2012 https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/when-backup-sets-are-deleted-under-dlm

[Cat_Adams · Accepted solution]

thanks pkh.  Where is the blog and article and can you change the date and time this occurs??

Cathy

[pkh · Accepted solution]

No. DLM will groom very 4 hours. You have no control over this

[Cat_Adams]

Wow..   I have things that have expired days ago.  Reason I am concerned is that I have full backups that go on the weekends and weekend before last,  several disk ran out of room but when I went to delete some of the files,  they had expires 2 weeks or more ago.  So the DLM is not working properly for me.

I just checked and for the incrementals to start out this week,  I had to delete some more.  Some expired June 16th.  That is why I am wanting to get a handle on this.

Thanks much

Cathy

[pkh · Accepted solution]

Make sure you are on SP4 and the latest hotfixes.

If your disks are removable USB disks, then plug them in and leave them for a couple of hours so that DLM can groom them.

[Colin_Weaver · Accepted solution]

Bear in mind that even though full backups might be listed as expired, they will not be removed from the system until all their dependent Incremental backups can also be removed from the system

As such if you are using 5 day retention on your fulls and incrementals (and assuming you run a full once week  and daily incremantals that run for 6 days before the next full) then the full will not be removed for 10 days (+ up to 4 hours more)

Also note that without changing the defaults we do not allow the last full sequence of a backup set to be removed autopmatically. As such if you run a one-off backup of a resource that backup will not be removed after the expiry time. The default setting that controls this is available in the BE console in 2014 but is a registry change in 2012. I would also suggest an upgrade anyway as 2014 does have some data lifecycle management (DLM) updates.

[Cat_Adams]

Thanks to you both.  I understand now.  Going to update to 2014 this fall.  Too much going on now but that explaination was great.  Good information to know going forward.

Thanks for taking the time to respond to this.

Regards

Cathy Adams

[Bayside_City_Co]

My experience is that assuming you are using the De-Dupe engine there are still many issues with the DLM even with BE2012 SP4.

I have Backup Sets sitting in my Central Admin Servers De-Dupe Store that have expired mid May and ave not yet been groomed out.  I have to manually remove these and we do Full backup every weekend.

Wish there was a way of charging back top Symantec the hours each day it take to manually manage their automatic environment

[Rajeev_theseeke]

we have data backing up to HP store once; and I notice 2 issues.

>  Lot of expired backups in one of the CASO; when you go to media and backup sets; I can really old data 

> The total amount of data on Store once catalyst store does not match up; we have items listed in store once repo from many years back although retention is only set for 4 weeks  

 question is 

>  Are there any logs to ensure DLM is running; is there a command to force run DLM

> Also I have been advised that these store once Catalyst stores were targets of different version of BE as we upgraded the versions over the years and  the store once devices had some backups from older version of BE (I was told data format and deletion of data was different is older version of Backup Exec ); so I have been advised to connect the same storeonce store A for example to another BE server and do a inventory and catalog as this will list the historical backups and we can then manually expire all that data; the only issue I have with this approach if this is going to cause any issue with the running on existing backup as the other instance of BE would be pointing to the same store.  

In our envrioment, every backup exec server is only connected to one HPstoreonce catalyst store; so a HP store device has multiple stores and each backup  server is connected to one unique store.   Store once use client side dedupe