filipzahradnik Posted July 19, 2007 Report Share Posted July 19, 2007 I'm experiencing an issue with my backup sets not being groomed correctly. I'm running Retrospect Multi-Server 7.5.387 on Win2k3 R2. I have a backup set (disk-based, 50GB, 128-bit AES encrypted) that is used to back up about 5 GB of data daily through a scheduled script. The backup set is configured to groom the backup set when full using default policy (keep backups for past 2 days at least). After about 10 days, Retrospect started prompting for additional media. Log reports that grooming ran but did not recover any additional space: 19/07/2007 10:14:12 AM: Groomed zero KB from Backup Set DTB Backup to Disk. To investigate further, I changed grooming policy to retain 1 backup only. Grooming still did not recover any additional space. There are now 10 sessions in the backup set, one for each of the past 10 days. If I understand grooming correctly, it should discard old sessions to free up space. Any ideas? Filip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted July 19, 2007 Report Share Posted July 19, 2007 Quote: If I understand grooming correctly, it should discard old sessions to free up space. Not quite. I believe that it discards copies of files in older sessions that are not present in later snapshots. For example, if a file did not change from 10 sessions ago when it was first backed up (and thus hasn't been backed up in subsequent sessions), the file will still remain in the backup set in order to be able to be restored by the most recent snapshot. Viewed another way, it keeps what it has to in order to preserve the most recent X snapshots. If you preserve only 1 snapshot, that's as if that snapshot was a full backup. russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
filipzahradnik Posted July 20, 2007 Author Report Share Posted July 20, 2007 Hi Russ, thanks for the clarification. You are right, grooming works on the file level, not session level. That however does not explain the problem I am experiencing. The backup set I described above is very easy to observe, as it only contains about 20 files. 3 are really big (2 GB each) and they change every night. Therefore, when grooming policy is set to retain 1 snapshot, the size of the set should go down dramatically. However that does not happen... Regards, Filip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
syeager Posted July 22, 2007 Report Share Posted July 22, 2007 I think there may be another reason why grooming does not work. In backup set properties there is a tab called "members", where you can specify how much disk space it will use. Perhaps grooming won't take place unless backup size reaches this value. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
filipzahradnik Posted July 23, 2007 Author Report Share Posted July 23, 2007 You are right - grooming only kicks in once the maximum member size has been reached. And that's when my problem became visible. The backup set has reached its maximum size, but Retrospect fails to groom out old snapshots. It prompts for a new member to continue backup. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lennart_T Posted July 24, 2007 Report Share Posted July 24, 2007 You know you can schedule "Groom" scripts, right? We have them scheduled at quiet times (weekend) and they groom the oldest snapshots. The Groom scripts don't wait for the member to reach its size limit, but removes the oldest snapshots according to the Backup Set preferences. Have you tried a "Groom" script? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
filipzahradnik Posted July 30, 2007 Author Report Share Posted July 30, 2007 I tried a schedulled grooming script - no luck. The script runs and grooms 0 kb out of the set. To rule out the backup set being at fault, I created a fresh new backup set and used it for backups. I now have 4 snapshots in the new backup set. Grooming policy is set to "Groom to remove backups older than 1". However when grooming runs, 0 kb is groomed out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lennart_T Posted July 31, 2007 Report Share Posted July 31, 2007 Quote: I tried a schedulled grooming script - no luck. The script runs and grooms 0 kb out of the set. To rule out the backup set being at fault, I created a fresh new backup set and used it for backups. I now have 4 snapshots in the new backup set. Grooming policy is set to "Groom to remove backups older than 1". However when grooming runs, 0 kb is groomed out. Are these 4 snapshots from the same computer or from different computers? If they are from different computers, nothing can be groomed. If they are from the same computer, some of the files must be deleted or changed between the backups, otherwise there is nothing to groom. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
filipzahradnik Posted August 2, 2007 Author Report Share Posted August 2, 2007 Hi Lennart, yes, the 4 snapshots are of the same data on the same computer. The files are the same filesa that change regularly and the yare backed up every day. So the 4 snapshots represent 4 versions of the same files for the past 4 days. Therefore, 3 snapshots should be groomed out when grooming policy is set to keep 1 snapshor, right? However that does not happen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lennart_T Posted August 2, 2007 Report Share Posted August 2, 2007 You are right. The files that changed should be groomed out (but not the others). If you look at Snapshots in the Backup Set, how many snapshots do you have now? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
filipzahradnik Posted August 13, 2007 Author Report Share Posted August 13, 2007 I now have 15 snapshots, one for every days since I created a new backup set. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lennart_T Posted August 14, 2007 Report Share Posted August 14, 2007 And when was the last time you ran a "Groom" script? What is your grooming setting in the backup set? Are all 15 snapshots from the same source (volume)? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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