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retention storage disk

jtorrescobar
Level 3
Partner

 

Hi,

I have a  backup vmware in storage disk and keep for 7 day, i see that backup remains by more 20 day in the storage disk. I need the backup with more than 7 day are purged from disk storage by have little room.

Thank you in advance for your replies

 

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION
13 REPLIES 13

AmolB
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

Have you configured your backup jobs to overwrite instead of appending.

jtorrescobar
Level 3
Partner

Hello Arnold,

is set to "Keep for" is storing to local disk, when work with disk storage  appending and overwrite options not displayed.

 

Regards,

José

VJware
Level 6
Employee Accredited Certified

Do you have incr/diff backups set up as well apart from full ? If yes, what number of days are set for keeping the backup sets ?

Lasltly, have you set the retain option on any backup sets ?

Sameer_Kapadia
Level 4
Employee

In BE 2012, backup sets on disk storage are managed by new feature Data Lifecycle Management (DLM). Please see the below blog for more details on DLM and see if your backup sets fullfill these crietrias.

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/blogs/data-lifecycle-management-be-2012

jtorrescobar
Level 3
Partner

Hello V.Jware,

Only work with full and option "Keep for" is in 7 day.

Were is set the retain option?

Regards,

José

VJware
Level 6
Employee Accredited Certified

From the Storage tab, click on Backup Sets and right-click the backup set which has not expired as expected...and see if Retain is checked or not...

jtorrescobar
Level 3
Partner

Hi VJware,

The retain option is not cheked, 

VJware
Level 6
Employee Accredited Certified

Is this the only backup set present ? Or is the latest backup set ?

jtorrescobar
Level 3
Partner

why the backup set are not delete  when your time expiration ended

Sameer_Kapadia
Level 4
Employee

If the backup set chain is last recovery chain on your setup then as a protection this chain is not deleted even though the expiration date has reached. If this is your case and want to turn off this particular behavior check this http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH187957

The backup set is also not deleted if any of the dependent backup sets are not expired. For eg. if you have Full backup B1 and Incremental backups I1, I2, I3, I4. Then till backup set I4 does not expire the rest of the backup sets B1, I1, I2, I3 are not deleted even though they might have expired.

Hope this helps.

jtorrescobar
Level 3
Partner

i work only with Full backup every day and expiration data is every 24 hour by little storage space, this backup set also work as dependent the others backup set

David_Palmersto
Level 4

In addition to the comments above (with which I agree based upon observations at our own site), it appears that the 'Lazy DLM' described by others will also leave Expired, Non-recovery chain backups, on B2D without reclaiming them until one of the space thresholds is past. 

We haven't had time to test yet (any volunteers?) - could the "Low Disk Space" threshold be set to a large percentage and cause more B2D sets to be removed quicker?

In addition, we are seeing 'some' B2D BKF files being overwritten and re-used after their expiration date. This occurs in perhaps 1 out of 6 BKFs on our B2D. (See Below for our analysis of this)

Personally, I'd like to be able to fill my B2D space up, defragment it, and then reuse things (with NO further file system overhead) from that point onward. This was the default behavior in previous versions of BE.

If I could depend upon BE consistently re-using the space AND I could REPORT on what was being used my backup life would be significantly easier and performance would be (I believe) significantly higher.

(Don't EVEN get me started about the 'wisdom' of putting tens of thousands of .xml and .fh files into a SINGLE folder for the catalogs.....)

Thanks,

 

Analysis of B2D files being re-used:

 

1)  BKF File name: B2D002239

2)  File Creation Date: 1-Jul-2012 11:32

3) File Modification Date: 16-Jul-2012 04:14

4) Original Backup on 1-Jul-2012 used media: B2D002238, B2D002239, B2D002240, B2D002241

5) Original Backups expired on 14-Jul-2012 11:33

6) 2nd Backup on 16-Jul-2012 used media: B2D005288, B2D005289, B2D002239

7) 2nd Backup did reuse existing B2D002239 based upon system Modification dates AND B2D file name.

We have read that B2D files in BE 2012 are moved to "Scratch media" by the DLM reclamation process that runs every 4 hours and then subsequently deleted.

We are guessing that if the BE media server is busy B2D files could get put into "Scratch media" and reused by running backups that have a higher priority than the DLM, thus explaining why some BKFs may be showing as reused.

Our experiments have also shown that restores of these 'reused' BKFs can be successful proving that the relinking process where B2D002239 is part of the 2nd Backup is working correctly.