Enterprise Vault collections and disk space reduction result

[UBB]

Hello all,

I am having a problem with collection tasks.

We have 2 vaults, one for Exchange mailbox data and one for fileshare data. I want to run collections on both to reduce the space as much as possible before closing those vaults off and creating new ones. We've only just discovered ways of reducing backup windows etc which we were not told off when EV went in at our business.

Anyway, I have set collections to run for the last 2 weeks with full backups every Sunday.

I can now see many colelction files but still see lots of .dvs files. I was toild they may be safety copies which are supposed to be deleted after a full backup. However, 2x full backups later the size of the disk in use remains at a constant 606GB. 

Do I need to do anything else to get this space reduced?

Please let me know as it is driving me nutz.

thanks, regards

[Alan_M]

They certainly aren't safety copies so don't delete them, they also aren't items that have been uncabbed for retrieval or restore since they would have an .archdvs extension so that leaves us with the likelihood that your collection policy needs to reviewed and or run longer.

[Michael_Bilsbor]

Hi,

When items are put into a collection then the DVS file should disappear so it would be interesting for you to open up the CAB files and see if the files listed within it are the same as the DVS files in the directory left around.

[UBB]

Hello thanks for the replies. The collections have had many hours during the week to run. I can tell you the collections take no longer than 10 minutes to run and return zero savesets created. ie. it would appear that the colelction can no longer create any more cab files.

I'm going to put this down as a one off thing as we are trying to convert a massive sized vault. When I open a new vault aprtition I will enable colelctions from day 1 and see how that goes.

In response to the reply about openeing cab files to see if the dvs files match, in all honesty, I haven't got time to do this and I think I will just carry on as planned as I can't wait as it keeps growing. Thanks both for your replies though.

regards

PS. if anyone else has any suggestions, please let me know

[UBB]

forgot to add, before this weekends full backup, I stopped all the EV services just to check as, the manual stated something that would seem the EV services have to be stopped to backuip fully. Anyway, it didn't work.

regards

[John_Chisari · Accepted solution]

You aren't going to see much space saving with Collections - as the DVS files are already highly compressed, you will not get much more in a cab.

Collections is used mainly to reduc your backup window - as backing up big files is much quicker than backing up alot of small files.

[UBB]

problem resolved but thanks to ALL for your prompt responses.

obliged,

H.