Catalog size, too big? and can it be downsized?

[LeeClayton]

How big is too big for a catalog?

Mine is currently 140GB - is it possible to shrink a catalog somehow?

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[Andy_Welburn · Accepted solution]

Host Properties/Master Server/<master_server>/Global Attributes tab "Compress catalog interval" - ours currently set to 210 days so only images older than that are compressed (for interest our catalog is ~100Gb but depending on your environment this could be considerably more). If you do any restores that involve compressed images then NB uncompresses them - so beware if you're tight on space.

There is also an archiving facility - check out the admin guides.

[Gerald_W__Gitau]

Read Netbackup Admin Guide (windows) vol1 from page 312 on how you can archive the catalog. Also take special note of the disadvantages of doing so.

[Stumpr2]

Is the glass of water half full or half empty? Neither, just get a bigger glass.

I compress but do not archive the catalog. If compression can not meet the needs then I simply get a bigger disk :)

Be careful when you first initialize compression. Do it in increments.
60 days
45 days
30 days
20 days
10 days
3 days ...stop

[Nicolai]

I agree with Stumpr. 

My catalog is 450GB and growing. Buy a bigger/more disk, I personally think the Netbackup catalog is the wrong place to save disk space.  Compression can save  space, but since the database switched to binary files instead of ASCII, the gain of compressing the catalog got less attractive.

Regards

Nicolai

[LeeClayton]

Thanks for the info everyone, my 140GB catalog takes 90 minutes to back up, we then duplicate to tape, I was hoping to reduce the backup time, i guess 140GB compared with some of you is still quite small.
At present I think i may leave as is. As for the compression I'd guess that a catalog is only ever gona be needed that's just a few days old, unless a really old backup is required, so compressing down to a few days is gona be a good bet.

[Douglas_A]

We recently found a problem with our catalog which is over 700gb the cleanup is NOT running as it should be. It is leaveing the .f files in the DB directory this causes our catalog to be huge, and also seems to be causing some random catalog backup failures.

[Stumpr2]

We recently found a problem with our catalog which is over 700gb the cleanup is NOT running as it should be. It is leaveing the .f files in the DB directory this causes our catalog to be huge, and also seems to be causing some random catalog backup failures.

Call for symantec help

[Douglas_A]

sorry it wasnt meant as a call for help.. symantec is working on a solution now it was more of informative information for the thread starter who perhaps could be having the same issue.

But thanks anyhow :)

[nefa]

So is there any solution to this yet?