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Deleting server specific backups

  • 10 December 2021
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What is the process to delete backup jobs for a specific server that were created by a VMware virtual server subclient?  In some cases I may want to manually age out some jobs.  Some of these jobs may be in cloud archive.  Will this free up storage?

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Best answer by Mike Struening RETIRED 11 December 2021, 04:44

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Removing jobs is pretty straightforward:

https://documentation.commvault.com/11.25/expert/13998_delete_job_from_copy.html
 

What’s less sure is how much space you’ll get back as a result. With your data likely deduplicated, you’ll likely only get some (or none) back since other jobs also reference those files/blocks. 
 

A good rule of thumb is that you’ll get back space for a series of removed jobs by multiplying the total size by the dedupe ratio. And subtracting that number from the total app size (ie 100 tb worth of jobs deduped at 75% will get you 25 tb if pruned). That’s not the only factor, but it’s a good start. 

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Oddly enough, on step 4, I don’t have an option to delete the job.  

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@jego If you do not have the delete option, make sure you are viewing jobs from the storage policy copy not the root storage policy.

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Thanks Scott, can you tell I’m new? 

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@jego  No worries glad we could help out.

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Thanks Scott, can you tell I’m new? 

This community is the best place for new people to learn!

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Does deleting the backup job from the storage policy also delete the secondary copy of that job?

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Does deleting the backup job from the storage policy also delete the secondary copy of that job?

You can’t delete jobs at the storage policy level, only storage policy copy. Jobs are managed independently in copies so you can generally delete from one copy without affecting that job in another copy. The exception is if you do something like delete the client or backup set which is technically higher in the hierarchy - that will erase all copies of the jobs associated with those objects (be very careful with that!)

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Thanks Damian.  I find myself facing an environment where backup requirements for servers were not properly defined resulting in unnecessarily long retention polices being applied; increasing storage costs.  Some of these servers have three years of backups when we only need to keep a month.  Am I correct to say that the smallest unit that can manually deleted is the job of the copy and the servers within the job cannot be deleted individually?  Wish I could find some kind of procedure to handle this kind of situation.

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That’s correct, for the most part.  We DO have ways to permanently delete items within the backup (essentially removes all index references) but that’s not really what you are looking for.

Might be worth running a Data Retention Forecast and Compliance Report for the (costly) libraries that are giving you concerns to see what jobs are the oldest and why.  Then you can make decisions on overall changes to retention to perhaps clear things out en masse.

 

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Hi all,

I take this opportunity to ask if there is any action to do after deleting a specific job in order to get the volume usage updated.

Indeed, we have reached the limit of the capacity for our MCS licensed space, so I have deleted some jobs to free some space. But MCS Volume usage has not been updated so far.

This results in keeping the next copy jobs to MCS in waiting mode.

What should I know next deleting a job to update the volume information ?

Thank you for your help.

Have a good day.

Benjamin.

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@BenGodi , it should update quickly, at least within a day.  I would ensure Data Aging has run and if so, open a support case.

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Hi Mike,

I have some jobs waiting for space. I have deleted jobs from MCS library. How can I force Data aging to run in order to update information about free space ? This way, my jobs should be resumed faster.

Thanks a lot.

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@BenGodi , it should run every 24 hours, though to force it sooner, right-click the Commserve in the GUI and select All Tasks>Data Aging.

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Hi @Mike Struening 

Thank you very much !

Have a good day.

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