No easy way of removing backup sets in BE2014

[PrisonerZero]

Hello

Upgraded from Be2012 to Be2014, and absolutely hate there is no way of manually deleting backup sets.

The backup strategy is backup to disk (1 week retention) and immedietly duplicate to tape (4 week retention). The problem I seem to have, is that the expired disk based backup chain thinks the duplicated non expired tape chain is a dependancy, and will not remove itself during the storage grooming process. So the HDD storage is filling up with expired backup chains, that can't be deleted.

I would easily remove them manually if I could, but the that functionality has been removed.

I will try recreating all the jobs, but its a huge nuisance. Has anyone had the same problem?

[ArtyVark]

I think that might be whats happened to me. The expired backup sets dont actually exist on the disk storage (ie the nas) which is why I think they are still showing. BE cant delete them as the files dont exist. I thought the inventory/catalog option would have sorted it out but it doesnt. So there is no way I can get rid of them.

[jerrys79]

So you think it would have cleaned it had the files still existed?  I thought the upgrade to 2014 made the old 2010 backup to disk folders "legacy" and read only.  I'm not sure what that means and if I need to setup all new backup to disk folders after the upgrade.  I don't have the disk space to run "legacy" and new folders in parallel even for a short time.  I asked a symantec backup "specialist" who was clueless.  I have been reading the admin guide but even in the legacy section it doesn't talk about how to clean them up.  I'm going into this part of it blindly but perhaps i'm putting too much thought into this whole thing and wouldn't have put any thought into it had I not stumbled on to this thread.  I guess I'll open a case if I do run across any issues and hope for the best.

Also, BE support can't help you clean up the database?  Just doesn't seem right that you have no way to get rid of them.

[jerrys79]

Are you able to maybe associate your media with a retired media set and then delete from there?

[PrisonerZero]

As Jerrys79 said, my understanding is the DLM searches for expired backup sets to delete from disk-based storage at the following times:

• Every 4 hours.
• When the low disk space threshold for disk-based storage is reached.
• When you manually expire a backup set.

However, backup sets will NOT be deleted by DLM if there are unexpired dependants EG:

• Expired full backup, but unexpired incrementals / differentials

However that is only if the "Allow Backup Exec to delete all expired backup sets" is ticked. What actually happens if this is unticked?

So in my case, the entire disk based chain (full + incrementals) is expired, but since it mistakenly thinks a duplicate on tape is a dependant, so DLM will never actually remove it, until the tape copy expires.

As a test, I have expired a "dependant" tape duplicate, and instantly DLM removes the expired disk backup sets.

Symantec, PLEASE bring back a delete now option!!!

[pkh]

By design, DLM will not delete the last recovery point even if it has expired.  This means that there will always be a backup set left for each server.  If checked, the "Allow Backup Exec to delete all expired backup sets" option will allow DLM to delete this last recovery point after it expires, but it means that you may potentially be left with no means to recover that server.  If unchecked, the last recovery will not be deleted.

This option has nothing to do with your problem.

[Frank_]

I have a simmilar issue. The dependancy list of a disk based set shows all the tape duplicates as well. This can not be mentioned. Our tapes has 8 weeks retention. Does this mean that alle the duplicates on tape will be at least 8 weeks on disk?

I only want the latest set on disk.

[DaveyMG]

I spent an hour on the phone with Symantec support on this issue this morning. The Expire option will cause an expired set to be removed from storage providing there are no dependent sets. I have the same issue as mentioned above that Tape sets are shown as being dependent on Disk sets and so BE will not expire the disk set. I don't know why a tech would say this is by design as it makes no sense at all. I've been through applying the hotfixes, catalog re-index and database rebuild/compact with no result. My case has been sent along to Advanced Support but I now have to wait 24-48 hours for the next response. I've already had to throw another disk volume into the B2D pool to keep things going, hopefully it will last until I can get this resolved. If not I'll just have to expire all the tapes sets so I can clean all this up.

[PrisonerZero]

My case has been escalated to Advanced Support too.

[Frank_]

DaveyMG and PrisonerZero,

I am very curious of the outcome. Please update your experience with the advanced support team.

[DaveyMG]

Had 30 minute session with Advanced Support tech who confirmed the problem, took some screenshots and diagnostic dumps and said he would escalate to the product team.

At one point it looked as though some backup sets that did not have tape sets dependent on them were actually deleting after being expired as they disappeared from the list. But a little later I looked at this again and found that because we had the backup set view sorted on the expiration column, after expiring the backup set it just relocated the set to the end of the list of expired sets. BE must be sorting all the backup sets whose status is "Expired" by the actual expiry date for the set (although that date isn't displayed in the column, it just says "Expired").

[DaveyMG]

Received another support call, they have taken a copy of the BE database to use to reproduce the problem.

[PrisonerZero]

Ive just had a copy of my Database and audit logs taken by Symantec.

[Frank_]

We are 2 weeks futher now, does anyone has a solution already?

[Christopher_Hug]

We reported this issue during the beta and opened a case regarding it on June 5th.  We provided all sorts of information to Symantec and haven't had any success in resolving the issue.  The case number is Case # 06709170.  We have ended up having to remove our disk backup location from backup exec, deleting it, and recreating it in order to recover the disk space and remove the backup sets and catalogs from Backup Exec.

[DaveyMG]

That's not very encouraging - neither is my last communication from Symantec support which was to say that the issue is with product engineering and next customer contact will be 18th August!

[jerrys79]

Are there any new updates on this issue?  With 34 comments in this forum discussion, an update from Symantec would be nice.  Thanks.

[PrisonerZero]

Yesterdays update from Symantec

"Engineering team is still researching on this issue"

It must be serious if they are spending weeks trying to fix it.

[PrisonerZero]

Anyone got an update? Ive got backups failing left, right & centre due to lack of disk space!

Under my case the, last update is now "Product Requires fix".

Generally, the lack of manual Force Delete of backups sets seems to be a step backwards. I have a expired backup set which stubbornly will not delete itself.

[DaveyMG]

After 6 weeks my case status is "Awaiting Hotfix" which doesn't indicate whether they've identified the cause of the problem and are creating the fix, or whether they're still trying to determine what is wrong.

Meanwhile my B2D storage is slowly filling up. Even recently created backups sets are shown as expired but are not being groomed.

[MiKeDaDoC-AC]

The "will-not-expire-bug" of "duplicate-to-tape-sets" should be fixed in SP1, now available:

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH216178