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Orphaned backup files in Dedup Storage folder

CsabaV
Level 3

Hello Community,

I've read through some topics regarding to orphaned .bkf files and how to handle them, but I think my situation is a little bit different and I'd like to ask for some help or guidance where to look further.

So we are using a Dedup Storage in order to have more storage space for backups. However we are about to run out of free space so the situation is quite bad.

First of all, I started to look up backup sets with old data, but I could not find any relavant information, it seemed OK and I did not understand what is occupying so much space. I went further and started digging in the files. I've found almost 8 TB of data (.BHD and .BIN files) from July 2017 (D:\BackupExecDeduplicationStorageFolder\data) as well as some PostgreSQL log files (D:\BackupExecDeduplicationStorageFolder\log\pddb). Okay, that's a huge amount of data. So I've headed back to Backup Exec admin console and started to look for backups from 2017. I've checked the Job History and I found a very few backups from November 2017 but still no backup which might contain old backup sets from July. I also checked Backup Calendar, maybe that helps me. Nope. Same as Job History.

What I would like to know:

  • Am I missing something and looking for old data at the wrong place?
  • How do I know which backup set created those old files?
  • If I have more information about those files, can I safely remove them manually?
  • If have no more information, what could be the worst case if I remove those files manually?

Hopefully I've provided enough useful information. If not, I'm happy to help further in order to resolve this case.

Thanks,
Csaba

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

Gurvinder
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

The backup done on dedupe is broken in segments and these segments are stored in these bin and bhd files known as containers. later when same segment is backed up then a references is added in the dedupe database (dedupe\databases\pddb) and hence you may see these files as not touched in a while. Having said that they are still referenced with the sets. If you need to reclaim space , you will need to follow this document. Should not be removing anything from inside the dedupe folder.

https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.000017049
https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.100038756.html    (refer section 4)

View solution in original post

3 REPLIES 3

Gurvinder
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

The backup done on dedupe is broken in segments and these segments are stored in these bin and bhd files known as containers. later when same segment is backed up then a references is added in the dedupe database (dedupe\databases\pddb) and hence you may see these files as not touched in a while. Having said that they are still referenced with the sets. If you need to reclaim space , you will need to follow this document. Should not be removing anything from inside the dedupe folder.

https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.000017049
https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.100038756.html    (refer section 4)

Thanks for the fast response, gonna dig myself into these articles and reply back when found out something useful!

Gurv,

Thanks for the explanation and for the articles as well! I started compacting and re-thinking the way we do backups and I managed to free up some storage space.

And last, but not least learnt something about Backup Exec!

 

So thank you again, I really appreciate your help!