Maser Posted March 27, 2009 Report Share Posted March 27, 2009 (edited) So -- in testing further about what happens when a disk "fills up". My disk media set is set so the "capacity" is the full size of the external hard disk it's backing up to. The external hard disk -- from the Finder -- reports that there is 3.78G free space (on a 500G -- or 445G as the max disk set capacity indicates -- HD). I ran a backup to this disk set which only wanted to back up 501 files -- 368M -- and grooming automatically kicked in. Which was what I was (eventually) looking to see when it would happen, but I wasn't expecting it to happen with this specific backup because of how much free space was still left on the hard disk. What algorithm is used to determine when the automatic grooming will kick in? There was clearly enough free disk space to accomodate the 368M of incremental data. And the "capacity" of the disk media set was nowhere close to it's theoretical maximum. But there was less than 1% of actual free hard disk space left at the time of the backup. What's the magic trigger to indicate when those automatic groom options will run? It's something I'd want to keep an eye on if it's a fixed "less than 1% of total disk space free" internal check for the future or something. Or is it some fixed percentage of the size of the *media set* in comparison to the free disk space? Can you elaborate on this? (The reason I ask is that the automatic grooming now seems to be running each time I run this incremental backup and as it's set for "10" -- and I have less than 10 backups -- it's grooming *something*, but I'm not sure what...) But the amount of free disk space is still less than 1% of the total when it's all done...) Edited March 27, 2009 by Guest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted March 27, 2009 Report Share Posted March 27, 2009 I am not sure what the actual trigger is. If the member properties are configured to only use 99% of the disk, then grooming would probably run with 1 % free for every backup. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maser Posted March 27, 2009 Author Report Share Posted March 27, 2009 Fair enough. What I can't figure out -- and tell me if this is a bug or not -- is that if I have grooming set to keep 10 backups and I do *not* have 10 backups/client. Shouldn't automatic grooming *not* run and I should get a "media request" error at this point? and the odder thing -- considering I don't have 10 backups/client -- when this *does* run, the Log indicates that some amount of data *has been groomed*. But I'm not sure from where. Any explanation for these two observations? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted March 27, 2009 Report Share Posted March 27, 2009 If you run out of disk space during a backup, grooming will try to run. If it is unable to remove enough data (due to the grooming settings), then a media request should then display. Not sure what is may have removed, it never really tells you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maser Posted March 27, 2009 Author Report Share Posted March 27, 2009 If you run out of disk space during a backup, grooming will try to run. If it is unable to remove enough data (due to the grooming settings), then a media request should then display. Not sure what is may have removed, it never really tells you. The "not sure what it may have removed" bothers me... If you can bounce this to Engineering to get an answer (it's not a priority at this point), I'd love to know... The first time I had this happen, I only had about 2.5G of free hard disk space. Somehow the first "groom" removed 1.6G of stuff -- but the number of "past backups" was the same (I'm pretty sure...) So, I don't know what actually happened, either... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maser Posted April 1, 2009 Author Report Share Posted April 1, 2009 I'd like to "bump" this because I'd still like an answer. In my test instance -- every time I was running a proactive backup of a client/internal HD, the program was *automatically* running some kind of groom. But my external HD media still had 9G of free space on it (and the disk media set showed 264G "free" capacity.) So the application must be flagging how much free disk space is actually on the "disk" where the media set is stored to determine if some groom -- which isn't defined anywhere -- should be run. Can you ask Engineering to clarify when this automatic-yet-unexpected groom *will* be kicking in? If it's based on a percentage of free disk space -- I want to know that percentage. if it's based on a fixed number of G free on a "disk" -- I want to know that threshold. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted April 2, 2009 Report Share Posted April 2, 2009 There are two different cases based on the location of the catalog file CASE 1: Catalog is on the same disk as the .rdb file. Grooming will be launched when one of the following conditions is true. 1. free space 2. free space CASE 2: catalog and rdb files are on different disks Grooming will be launched when the free space is about 10M. the algorithm is complex which depends on free space, capacity, location of catalog file, and etc. the above is the approximate description. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maser Posted April 2, 2009 Author Report Share Posted April 2, 2009 There are two different cases based on the location of the catalog file CASE 1: Catalog is on the same disk as the .rdb file. Grooming will be launched when one of the following conditions is true. 1. free space < (the size of catalog file * 5) That explains what I saw. My catalog file is 1.86G (non-compressed catalog file) on the same disk as the media. Thanks for this explanation! This is exactly what I was looking for. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maser Posted April 2, 2009 Author Report Share Posted April 2, 2009 Actually, I guess the *followup* question to ask Engineering is: What actually gets "groomed" when these automatic grooms run? It's not a fixed number of backups, nor does it seem to be any specific backup, either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted April 2, 2009 Report Share Posted April 2, 2009 Grooming is going to look at the grooming option you selected. It can not groom away data that doesn't match your grooming option. I really do not recommend saving the catalog file on the same disk as the backup media. It will impact performance and increase the chance for catalog corruption. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maser Posted April 2, 2009 Author Report Share Posted April 2, 2009 Can the catalog file be *moved* after you've already set up a disk media set with the catalog files already on the "disk"? If so, what would be the steps? "Remove" the disk media set? Move the catalog file? Then "Locate" the media set again and readd it to the script(s)? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maser Posted April 2, 2009 Author Report Share Posted April 2, 2009 Grooming is going to look at the grooming option you selected. It can not groom away data that doesn't match your grooming option. . Then there's a bug in the automatic grooming in these cases. I have "groom after 10" set for my set. Clearly, the catalog file (on the same disk as the data files) was large enough that the "5x" grooming started. However, I did *not* have more than 10 "Past Backups" in my list for any of my clients. Yet the log file indicated *something* was groomed.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted April 2, 2009 Report Share Posted April 2, 2009 When you move the catalog file, go to Media Sets. Select the media set and click Locate to find the catalog. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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