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EV9 large number of empty directories on disk

Brettt
Level 2

Peeps,

I'm running EV9.0 on Windows 2003 r2 SP2 and have a very nice, agressive collection schedule configured that works very well. Only thing - it leaves behind all the directories from which the archived files are collected from, so even though one of my partitions has been collected from about 2 million files down to about 80 thousand files, I still have about 2 million directories on disk, most of which are now empty.

I suspect the sheer numbers of empty directories are contributing to backup performance degradation and very slow report generation of disk usage information (eg: diruse.exe, treesize, etc). There is also 600GB of a 2TB LUN that I also can't account for when comparing the disk properties free space to the folder/ file size properties from any of the disk usage reports. (The disk properties shows 600GB more in use than any disk usage report total).

What would be the impact of manually deleting these empty directories? For example, when an item is retrieved from a CAB file, does EV expect the original directory structure to still be in place, causing the process to fail if I have removed those directories? Or will it store the archdvs file along side the CAB file, rendering the orignal directory structure irrelevant, or possibly will is recreate the original directory structure as required?

Brettt

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

JesusWept3
Level 6
Partner Accredited Certified

OK So i just tested it and it *does* recreate the folders
Heres the steps i followed

Step 1: 
Go to http://yourEVServer/EnterpriseVault/Search.asp?advanced

Step 2:
Uncheck "Search Attachments",
change Sort Results to "Archived Date, Oldest First",
change Details to "Full"

Step 3:
Press the Search button

Step 4:
Make a note of the "SeqNum" on a particular result (i.e. SeqNum: 1)

Step 5:
Run the following query to get its CAB file location

SELECT A.ArchiveName, S.IndexSeqNo, S.IdChecksumHigh, S.IdChecksumLow, S.IdDateTime, S.ArchivedDate, S.IdTransaction, (PE.PartitionRootPath + '\' + C.RelativeFileName)
FROM EnterpriseVaultDirectory.dbo.Archive A,
     EnterpriseVaultDirectory.dbo.Root R,
     EnterpriseVaultDirectory.dbo.PartitionEntry PE,
     EnterpriseVaultDirectory.dbo.VaultStoreEntry VSE,
     yourVaultStore.dbo.Saveset S,
     yourVaultStore.dbo.Collection C,
     yourVaultStore.dbo.ArchivePoint AP
WHERE S.CollectionIdentity = C.CollectionIdentity
  AND S.ArchivePointIdentity = AP.ArchivePointIdentity
  AND AP.ArchivePointId = R.VaultEntryId
  AND R.RootIdentity = A.RootIdentity
  AND A.VaultStoreEntryId = VSE.VaultStoreEntryId
  AND VSE.VaultStoreEntryId = PE.VaultStoreEntryId
  AND PE.IdPartition = C.IdPartition
  AND S.IndexSeqNo = 1
  AND A.ArchiveName LIKE 'Your Name%'

 

Step 6:
From the results i can see that the CAB file this item is located in is in:
E:\Vault Stores\myVault Ptn1\2010\01-20\B\Collection12345.CAB

My Transaction ID is : B03A658C-C9B1-43E8-E748-F87CCD744251
My Archived Date is : 2010-01-20 20:54:00.000

EV will extract the item from the CAB to \yyyy\mm-dd\[first TID char]\[next three TID chars]

So in this case it would extract to the following location
E:\VaultStores\myVault Ptn1\2010\01-20\B\03A\B03A658CC9B143E8E748F87CCD744251.ARCHDVS

Step 7:
Browse to that location and ensure the directory is empty

Step 8:
Go to the Browser with your search open and then open up that item that you found in Search.asp

Step 9:
Go back to the location and ensure a new ARCHDVS file now exists

Step 10:
Delete or rename the three letter TID directory (i.e rename \03A\ or delete it)

Step 11:
Go back to the Browser search and open the item again

Step 12:
Ensure that the directory and the file have been recreated

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-allen-turl-07370146

View solution in original post

9 REPLIES 9

JesusWept3
Level 6
Partner Accredited Certified

Enterprise Vault should recreate the directory no problem.

So what i would do if i were you, find an item through search that has been collected and then open the item through the browser, then locate the ArchDVS file on disk, then rename or delete the folder its located in, then try and open the item again.

You should see it open and you should see that EV has recreated the directory and reextracted the item to an ArchDVS file.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-allen-turl-07370146

JesusWept3
Level 6
Partner Accredited Certified

OK So i just tested it and it *does* recreate the folders
Heres the steps i followed

Step 1: 
Go to http://yourEVServer/EnterpriseVault/Search.asp?advanced

Step 2:
Uncheck "Search Attachments",
change Sort Results to "Archived Date, Oldest First",
change Details to "Full"

Step 3:
Press the Search button

Step 4:
Make a note of the "SeqNum" on a particular result (i.e. SeqNum: 1)

Step 5:
Run the following query to get its CAB file location

SELECT A.ArchiveName, S.IndexSeqNo, S.IdChecksumHigh, S.IdChecksumLow, S.IdDateTime, S.ArchivedDate, S.IdTransaction, (PE.PartitionRootPath + '\' + C.RelativeFileName)
FROM EnterpriseVaultDirectory.dbo.Archive A,
     EnterpriseVaultDirectory.dbo.Root R,
     EnterpriseVaultDirectory.dbo.PartitionEntry PE,
     EnterpriseVaultDirectory.dbo.VaultStoreEntry VSE,
     yourVaultStore.dbo.Saveset S,
     yourVaultStore.dbo.Collection C,
     yourVaultStore.dbo.ArchivePoint AP
WHERE S.CollectionIdentity = C.CollectionIdentity
  AND S.ArchivePointIdentity = AP.ArchivePointIdentity
  AND AP.ArchivePointId = R.VaultEntryId
  AND R.RootIdentity = A.RootIdentity
  AND A.VaultStoreEntryId = VSE.VaultStoreEntryId
  AND VSE.VaultStoreEntryId = PE.VaultStoreEntryId
  AND PE.IdPartition = C.IdPartition
  AND S.IndexSeqNo = 1
  AND A.ArchiveName LIKE 'Your Name%'

 

Step 6:
From the results i can see that the CAB file this item is located in is in:
E:\Vault Stores\myVault Ptn1\2010\01-20\B\Collection12345.CAB

My Transaction ID is : B03A658C-C9B1-43E8-E748-F87CCD744251
My Archived Date is : 2010-01-20 20:54:00.000

EV will extract the item from the CAB to \yyyy\mm-dd\[first TID char]\[next three TID chars]

So in this case it would extract to the following location
E:\VaultStores\myVault Ptn1\2010\01-20\B\03A\B03A658CC9B143E8E748F87CCD744251.ARCHDVS

Step 7:
Browse to that location and ensure the directory is empty

Step 8:
Go to the Browser with your search open and then open up that item that you found in Search.asp

Step 9:
Go back to the location and ensure a new ARCHDVS file now exists

Step 10:
Delete or rename the three letter TID directory (i.e rename \03A\ or delete it)

Step 11:
Go back to the Browser search and open the item again

Step 12:
Ensure that the directory and the file have been recreated

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-allen-turl-07370146

Brettt
Level 2

Nice one, thanks JW2. That's a very thorough test of the example scenario proposed, I appreciate it.

Are the any other reasons that I should not remove the empty directories?

Brettt
Level 2

Oh, for the record, the 600GB of used disk space that I couldn't account for automagically reappeared over night. Seems I put too much IO load on the LUN hosted the open EV partitions while they were being backed up and caused VolSnap to delete the shadow copies on that LUN. The backups failed, but I do have my disk space back. This is still circumstantial, so further investigation is required, but it appears the used space discrrepancy is related to VSS stuf.

 

-Maurice
Level 4
Partner Accredited

Hi Brettt,

currently one of my customers is running out of inodes on one of the storage volumes. He is using collections and the EV System since a really long time productive. We guess that we might have a lots of empty folders which are consuming inodes.

We think about, to delete the empty folders to free up some inodes on the storage.

You deleted the empty folders some days ago, did you see any issues after deleting this? Is the system running fine?

Thanks & Regards

Maurice

Brettt
Level 2

Hi Maurice,

I have not yet removed any empty directories. I am waiting to see if there is any further considerations I should, err, consider before proceeding.

Brettt

-Maurice
Level 4
Partner Accredited

Hi Brett,

thanks for your comment. I wrote an email to one symantec consultant to see what considerations he might have.

cheers Maurice

jahanbin
Level 3

Brett,

I am having the same issue.  I been thiking about deleteing these directories.  Have you by any chance tried this yet?  for us these SEV stores are for our journaling data and contains many TB of data.  Even if the folders get recreated I would be concerned if they would need to be recreated when a CA or DA serach is utilized.  We use CA and DA to search the SEV data for compliance purposes.  The searches are already very slow and take hours to complete wouldn't want to slow them down even more.

I wish we got more information about this from Symantec i been serach for an answear for hours.

JesusWept3
Level 6
Partner Accredited Certified

Searches, whether they be through Archive Explorer, browser search, DA or CA etc utilize the indexes and have nothing to do with storage. The only time the items would be retrieved are when you are doing a content preview or an export through DA or opening the item

The folders WILL recreate, i promise, you just have to trust to your own processes that you will genuinely delete only empty folders

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-allen-turl-07370146