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Grooming problem


Ramon88

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Okay, I've been brooding on this one for some time... Unfortunately I can't get it working the way I want it.

 

This is the idea:

Everyday an application dumps data in a directory (at once at a certain fixed time). It keeps the last 8 dumps in that directory and only incrementally inserts the dump of the last 24 hours in said directory. Every day around 70 GB gets added. The total directory size is around 560GB. Older dumps are removed automatically. Retrospect is not involved during this procedure.

 

I need Retrospect to make a backup every day of the last day added files from that directory to a Disk Backup Set. So I created a standard Backup script with a custom selector:

 

Universal > Date > [x] File [ ] Folder

[creation date] [is] [on or after] [current date]

[no offset]

 

About an hour after the automatic application dump completes Retrospect starts its script and correctly finishes its backup weighing in the expected 70GB.

 

So far so good... But here is where it goes wrong:

 

I've created a Disk Backup Set as a target. It has grooming enabled with "Groom to remove backups older than [8]". Backup Set size was set to about 600GB, but als tried/needed to increase to 1000GB and 1200GB. It has AES-128 encryption enabled, but no data compression. "Keep Catalog File compressed" is enabled (default).

 

However Retrospect doesn't seem to groom out older than "8" backups, and it asks for more space (so far I've added some space to the Backup Set to compensate a couple of times but that's not a solution). Setting the Backup Set to "Groom to Retrospect defined policy" doesn't yield anything as well.

 

Manually grooming doesn't trigger any errors but doesn't groom out more than a couple of KB's. Either triggered by a groom script or as part of the "prepare media" option.

 

In effect the Backup Set needs to grow or needs to be recycled, but grooming is not working. So after some time capacity problems will kick in and we wanted grooming to avoid that altogether...

 

Am I doing something wrong? Does Encryption have anything to do with this, or might this be a bug?

 

Retrospect version used: 7.6.123

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Hi Robin,

 

When I had the "Groom to remove backups older than" at 8 it didn't contain more. Now I had it set at "Retrospect standard policy" and it contained 9 snapshots. When I switched it to 7 it said it would retrieve older snapshots... That operation took mere seconds. Now there are 7 snapshots (and still 20 sessions)... But there is no space freed.

 

But here is a thought... The source (application) keeps it's own track of the files and leaves the last 8 backups in the source directory. Now could it be that Retrospect actually keeps the files in the snapshot 8 days longer (so for 8+8=16 days) because of this?

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I just groomed with a setting of "keep 2" and now it -did- groom out space. It resulted in a backup set with 16 sessions and 2 snapshots...

 

So my mistake was I didn't take into account the fact Retrospect sees the source files standing there for 8 days and the "last day" selector doesn't block that from its view.

 

The solution is to add some space to the backup set target hardware. I've already ordered extra drives.

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