jon.glassstate.mn.us Posted October 6, 2009 Report Share Posted October 6, 2009 Running Retrospect 7.6.111 on a Server 2003 machine: I have an erratic number of Snapshots per client for some reason in my backup set. Some clients go back 3 months, some 2 months, and others go well over a year. However, the majority is at 2 months. Two questions on this: 1) Why do I have snapshots dating back over a year on one client: 3 months on a few others, and 2 months on everything else. Shouldn't they all be consistent? I do groom regularly using Retrospect's grooming policy, but shouldn't the snapshot history be consistent for each client after grooming? 2) If I look in the Sessions tab of the Backup Set, I can see history and browse files backed up up to 2 years ago. Is it possible to recreate an old snapshot from the data in these sessions? I would like to maintain a 1 year snapshot for each client, but as you can see most of the clients only have 2 months remaining, I don't know if grooming removed all the snapshots for only some clients or what... I included some shots of what I'm looking at to hopefully clarify what I'm talking about Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jon.glassstate.mn.us Posted October 6, 2009 Author Report Share Posted October 6, 2009 Oops.... I didn't realize the images were gonna be so huge Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted October 6, 2009 Report Share Posted October 6, 2009 Oops.... I didn't realize the images were gonna be so huge Huge is good, helps us see. Do you have multiple backup scripts dumping into this one backup set, or is it all done with one script? If you have multiple backup scripts, is there something special about the one that does these problematic clients? Is there anything different about these problematic clients? Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted October 6, 2009 Report Share Posted October 6, 2009 Regarding your questions: Is it possible to recreate an old snapshot from the data in these sessions? I would like to maintain a 1 year snapshot for each client, but as you can see most of the clients only have 2 months remaining, I don't know if grooming removed all the snapshots for only some clients or what... A bit of explanation as to the paradigm, and then the answers. Please accept my apologies if you already know this. The backup set is a database container, and holds files and metadata. The catalog is a database index into the backup set (database), and tells where all the files and metadata is for each snapshot. The "snapshot" is a list of files (and directories, and some other stuff) that were present on the volume at the time of the backup session. Under the hood, Retrospect behaves like traditional backup programs (full backup, followed by incrementals), but the "snapshot" paradigm gives a presentation to the user of the list of files at the time of the backup session, and Retrospect uses its database pointers for the snapshot to locate the various files in each of the sessions (full plus incrementals) in the backup set. When grooming occurs, Retrospect decides which snapshots are eligible for elimination and then examines all retained snapshots for files (and versions of those files) that are to be retained. Some of the retained files may go all the way back to the first full backup, while some files are found in various incrementals (sessions) scattered throughout. Any files not present in the retained snapshots can be "groomed out", as can the information for all eliminated snapshots, and that space can be reclaimed, leaving only the retained snapshots and the files necessary to support those retained snapshots, whereever they are found in the backup set. So, no, once grooming has occurred, and snapshots have been eliminated, those snapshots have been lost, along with the information for those eliminated snapshots. Some portions of the incremental sessions and initial full session that initially supported those eliminated snapshots may remain if those files are needed for some of the retained snapshots. Clear? The puzzling part is why some clients' older snapshots aren't being groomed out. Again, is there something special about how these clients are backed up? Perhaps "proactive" vs. scripted? Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jon.glassstate.mn.us Posted October 6, 2009 Author Report Share Posted October 6, 2009 Do you have multiple backup scripts dumping into this one backup set, or is it all done with one script? 1 script Is there anything different about these problematic clients? Nothing different. The client with a years worth of snapshots is a workstation that began using Retrospect at the same time as all the other machines Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jon.glassstate.mn.us Posted October 6, 2009 Author Report Share Posted October 6, 2009 (edited) The puzzling part is why some clients' older snapshots aren't being groomed out. Again, is there something special about how these clients are backed up? Perhaps "proactive" vs. scripted? Actually they are ALL using Proactive... But as far as I know there is nothing different between any of the machines that would cause it to hold Snapshots longer for some than others Edited October 6, 2009 by Guest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted October 6, 2009 Report Share Posted October 6, 2009 I do groom regularly using Retrospect's grooming policy And what choices have you made? An interesting experiment would be to "Transfer" the contents of this backup set to another backup set, groom that, and see what results, in case there is some catalog corruption. Or to rebuild the catalog - save the current one away so that it could be restored, if necessary. The oddest point is your statement that all clients are proactive backup, a single script, and these clients were started at the same time. Perhaps it's your matching options, such that certain key OS files, etc., were captured from these oldest clients, and are still present, preventing the deletion of oldest snapshots, and multiple identical copies of those files aren't being backed up from the other computers because there is already a single instance of them in the backup set (from the old stuff). It's a real head-scratcher, though. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jon.glassstate.mn.us Posted October 7, 2009 Author Report Share Posted October 7, 2009 And what choices have you made? I'm not sure what you're asking. It has always groomed according to Retrospect's defined grooming policy (min of 2 backups per client, 1 per day for a week, 1 per week for a month, and monthly after that) I have rebuilt the catalog several times to no avail. When I look in the actual files of the backup set, it has a large amount of backup files from the original date we started using Retrospect, presumably the original full snapshots. They supposedly haven't been modified since they were created, so it seems that there has to be old snapshots that can be derived from this. (unless Retrospect modifies them without Windows being able to detect it....) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lennart_T Posted October 7, 2009 Report Share Posted October 7, 2009 When I look in the actual files of the backup set, it has a large amount of backup files from the original date we started using Retrospect, presumably the original full snapshots. They supposedly haven't been modified since they were created, so it seems that there has to be old snapshots that can be derived from this. (unless Retrospect modifies them without Windows being able to detect it....) The backup files may contain "original" files that still reside on the client's hard drives and hasn't been modified since 2007. If the original files still reside on the client's disk, they can't be groomed out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jon.glassstate.mn.us Posted October 7, 2009 Author Report Share Posted October 7, 2009 That makes sense. Is there any sort of grooming log that records what the grooming process has done? In the Operations Log it just tells you how much space it has groomed off... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ramon88 Posted October 7, 2009 Report Share Posted October 7, 2009 Regrettably no. Btw, did you start out with 7.6.111 or with an older version? In the past some versions of Retrospect had some grooming difficulties. So that might be a cause of your problem (this is speculation). Is it an option to start over? In that case you should consider upgrading to the most recent version (7.6.123). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jon.glassstate.mn.us Posted October 7, 2009 Author Report Share Posted October 7, 2009 That seems like something that should really be there, so people can see what it is that grooming has done since it is deleting files. Will that be in the next release? At least logging of what snapshots the groom has removed the ability to restore. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jon.glassstate.mn.us Posted October 7, 2009 Author Report Share Posted October 7, 2009 Is there anyway to see how much space each client is taking up within a Backup Set? Or better yet, how much space each individual snapshot is taking up within the Backup Set? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted October 7, 2009 Report Share Posted October 7, 2009 Btw, did you start out with 7.6.111 or with an older version? In the past some versions of Retrospect had some grooming difficulties. So that might be a cause of your problem (this is speculation). Is it an option to start over? In that case you should consider upgrading to the most recent version (7.6.123). IF this is the case, then you might be able to recover, after upgrading, by "Transferring" the entire contents of that backup set to a new backup set (if you've got the 2x storage needed). Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jon.glassstate.mn.us Posted October 7, 2009 Author Report Share Posted October 7, 2009 We started out on 7.5 and are now on 7.6.111. I will upgrade to 7.6.123 and keep my fingers crossed. I have the extra storage needed as long as its temporary and I can delete one of the Backup Sets afterward. I'll let you know what happens. Thanks for everyone's help! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jon.glassstate.mn.us Posted October 8, 2009 Author Report Share Posted October 8, 2009 IF this is the case, then you might be able to recover, after upgrading, by "Transferring" the entire contents of that backup set to a new backup set (if you've got the 2x storage needed) Ok, I transferred the entire Backup Set into a new one, which oddly enough is only 2/3 the size (Maybe due to compression). Also, the new Backup Set says it contains about 65 less snapshots than the original (159 to 225), and did not gain any of the lost snapshots. I am in the process of rebuilding the catalog for the new backup set, but is there anything else I need to do for this possible recovery? Again, thanks for your help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted October 8, 2009 Report Share Posted October 8, 2009 Ok, I transferred the entire Backup Set into a new one, which oddly enough is only 2/3 the size (Maybe due to compression). It may be due to reclaiming of unused space in the backup set, which was causing these issues. Also, the new Backup Set says it contains about 65 less snapshots than the original (159 to 225), and did not gain any of the lost snapshots. That's to be expected. See discussion upthread. The interesting question would be whether the ancient snapshots are still there after a grooming run. I am in the process of rebuilding the catalog for the new backup set, but is there anything else I need to do for this possible recovery? Well, I'd try some test restores from some of the older snapshots, and I'd also try some test restores after a grooming run. See if a grooming run cleans things up further. I would expect that it will. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MRIS Posted October 8, 2009 Report Share Posted October 8, 2009 Please take another look at the .rdb files in the screenshot above. Notice that NTFS compressions has been enabled some of them. I'd be willing to suggest the following: 1. You're better off using Retrospect's compression, rather than NTFS'. 2. It's possible that the NTFS compression being present on these files is causing the unusual behaviors being observed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted October 8, 2009 Report Share Posted October 8, 2009 Please take another look at the .rdb files in the screenshot above. Notice that NTFS compressions has been enabled some of them. good catch - I hadn't noticed that. Some testing would confirm this. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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