Expire disk backups

[snawaz3]

I am experiencing a problem related to this topic.

Can I expire images on disk via the GUI. I am not familiar with the cmds. Can somebody guide me as I am new to netbackup. I need to cleanup space on my disk drive. Also if I expire then will the image cleanup utility that i see run in the activity monitor cleanup the expired images?

[RamNagalla]

Duplicate to 

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/image-cleanup-5

[Marianne]

You can use the Catalog section of the NBU GUI to search for images and expire them.

WARNING:

You have retention periods in your backup schedules for a reason.

Only expire images with written consent from your management and system owners. Manual expiration is a breach of SLA.

Rather motivate for additional storage or implement duplication to tape.

If you let us know what type of disk storage (i.e. Basic Disk, Advanced Disk, OST, Dedupe, etc) we can recommend  best way to duplicate the disk backups and allow NBU to manage space.

[snawaz3]

I am using basic disk. The retention periods were setup before I was given this assignment. While setting up the policies, since I did not fully understand vaulting at the time, I setup the retention period as follows Daily --- Differentia l---- I week Weekly --- Full --- 4 weeks Monthly --- Full --- I year Later on I was introduced to vault. I understand and correct me if I am wrong. My policies are setup to write to disk. With the above configuration I believe the images are being stored on disk. I have setup vaulting to write to tape in the duplication tab, with the same retention periods. My tapes are ejecting and I am taking them off site. I now have the Weekly Full backup on tape from last week. I also have the Daily Differential backups for the last 4 days on tape. My intention was to delete all images from the disk and start anew with the following retention periods in my policies with the storage set to disk. Daily --- Differntial --- 1 day Weekly --- Full --- 1 week monthly --- Full --- 1 month Does this seem like a good idea? I need all the help I can get to set this up properly. thanks

[RamNagalla]

not at all..

your differntial backup should have to cover the gap between Full backups.

if your frequency of Full backup is weekly once, your Differential backup shoudl retain minimum of 7 days.. max your wish.

becasue example:-

you have full backup on Sunday with file names  A, B

and incr backup on monday which is newly created file C.

File C is not modified on Tuesday. and File A is modifed. so Tuesday backup just takes only File A.

if your want to restore on Wednsday, you need to have Full backup, Monday INCr, and Tuesday backup to cover all modifiecations.

if you keep Retenction is 1 day for INcr, your moday backups expires in one day and not avalaibe of Wednsday restore.

you will miss the file C in the restore.

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you can use above retenctions if you want to chage the retenction of your duplicatate(tape) copy., as your are using vault, even duplicacation Failed, your disk image will expire based on the conifgured retenction.

only SLP can manage this and SLP can not be used for  Basic disk.

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if your requirement is Free up the space on disk as soon as its got duplicated to tape, i would suggest below.

keep all Disk images retenction as INFINITY

configure , vault to use the duplicate copy(tape) retenctioon as 

Daily --- Differentia l---- I week
Weekly --- Full --- 4 weeks
Monthly --- Full --- I year

and also , select the option , expire original disk images option in Vault profile.

[snawaz3]

Nagalla, your solution sounds good to me. maybe you can clear up some things for me. if I set the DISK images retention as INFINITY would that not mean that the images will never expire.? and would fill up my disks? If the expire original disk images option in vault profile over rides (which I am assuming) the retention period in the profile then can I setup from vault to expire the images on DISK using the following settings Daily ---- Differntial ----- expire original backup disk after 168 hrs (1 week) frequency is 1 day Weekly ---- Full ---- expire original backup disk after 336 hrs (2 weeks) frequency is 2nd,3rd,4th,5th Friday Monthly ---- Full ----- expire original backup disk after 1461 hrs (2 months) frequency is 1st Friday Thanks for your help.

[RamNagalla · Accepted solution]

hi ,

yes,expire original disk option in vault profile over rides the retenction that you set in policy.

I suggested to make use of INFINITY to make sure, that the Vault verify if if the copy is duplicacated and then only its get expired based on the time that we use on "expire original backup disk after".

if the Duplication is not successfull, Vault will not expire the disk image,it will make sure that you have duplicate tape copy before it expires.

if your disk have enough room to have the images as you specified,below you are good to go..

Daily ---- Differntial ----- expire original backup disk after 168 hrs (1 week) frequency is 1 day

Weekly ---- Full ---- expire original backup disk after 336 hrs (2 weeks) frequency is 2nd,3rd,4th,5th Friday
Monthly ---- Full ----- expire original backup disk after 1461 hrs (2 months) frequency is 1st Friday

Good luck..

[snawaz3]

Thanks Nagalla, You have been most helpful. Now I have a DUH question. This is about my Daily Differential tapes. In vault if I set the expiration date to 4 weeks and select the option ," expire original disk images " to 168 hours (1 week), I understand that the images on DISK will expire after 1 week and the images on TAPE will expire after 4 weeks. Correct? I have a separate set of TAPES for Monday, Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday. I have setup eject as per the attached document. Now my DUH questions are 1. Will the tapes eject after the Daily vault job is run? 2. Can I use the same tapes for next weeks Daily vault? 3. Will it apphend to the previous weeks Daily or will it over write last weeks Daily? My predicament is that I want to save the Daily backup to TAPE for 4 weeks just in somebody requests a file from a particular date. I want to have 1 week retention on DISK for speedy recovery and also to save space. Similarly I would also have 4 weeks of separate set of TAPES as I am doing a weekly backup on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th week with a retention period of 4 weeks and I would reuse those tapes after 4 weeks rotation. On DISK the retention period would be 336 hours (2 weeks) And my monthy backup to DISK would have a retention of 731 hours (1 month) and on TAPE the retention would be 1 year. Your comments and help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

[RamNagalla]

hi , check below

In vault if I set the expiration date to 4 weeks and select the option ," expire original disk images " to 168 hours (1 week), I understand that the images on DISK will expire after 1 week and the images on TAPE will expire after 4 weeks. Correct?

Yes. you are correct.

1. Will the tapes eject after the Daily vault job is run?

I would like to see what is the "backup started, and times in the Choose backups tab in Vault profile to answer this.

2. Can I use the same tapes for next weeks Daily vault?

once the tape ejects, as it retenction is 4 weeks, it requires to insert in library after 4 weeks, if you think to use the tapes before that yes, you can insert them backup and reuse for the next week duplications and they will get eject after that, you can make this everyweek.

3. Will it apphend to the previous weeks Daily or will it over write last weeks Daily?

Netbackup will never overwrite when tape has valid images, it only overwrites when the images has been expired in catalog.

[snawaz3]

Thanks for the guidedance. Attached is the screen shot. I do not understand what the backup started between really means. This was setup when I was pushed into this. Could you explain how to use this?

[RamNagalla]

hi Snawaz,

Backup Started :-  Vault session needs to look for the images which are backedup between these times,to compleate the tasks(duplication/ejection)

for example:-

you have backup image  xyz_123 of 20/jan/2013,

and vault is set for Backup Started is 7 days 0 hours and 0 hours and 0 days.

your vault job is started on 29/jan/2013.

the vault job will not consider the image xyz_123, because it is not fit in the Time fram (7 days 0 hours and 0 hours and 0 days.) that you specified in Vault profile.image is older than 9 days and your profile is only looks for 7 days old images , it does not go beyoend that.

if you use the 7 days 0 hours and 2 hours and 0 days., it only consider the backup images happend between 7 days to 2 days.. it does not consider the lates backup that are happend with in 2 days.

____________

as you specified 7 days 0 hours and 0 hours and 0 days., it will only consider the backup that are happend with in the 7 days to at the time of Vault start.

 Will the tapes eject after the Daily vault job is run?

yes, if you are duplication job is compleated by the time of Vault eject., if the duplication job is not compleated, tape will eject in next day run.