VDR reclaim job and shrinking datastore?

[fgl]

Has anyone actually been able to tell if the reclaim job actually does anything to reclaim space because my storage usage only increases and never shrinks in size. I've even decided to do a test where I deleted ALL restore points for ALL VMs so there was absolutely no restore points left not even one, delete all backup schedules so no backups are done and then I reboot the VDR and waited for it to run its recatalog job then the reclaim job and then the integrity check job and after all was done which took about 3 days to complete, I looked at the storage locations and all 200+GB of SLAB and DAT files were still there. So again I ask how do you shrink the amount of data that is NOT being used anymore?

[vmbru]

Azmir,

Sounds promising.

Maybe our problem is the *tune2fs* issue? Attached is the error log of errors that we have never seen before. VDR shows 26GB left of a 1.35TB drive, vcenter tells us 100.76GB free of a 1.36TB datastore.

Capacity=1.35TB

Deduped=895GB

Non-deduplicated size=9.52TB

Let me know.

[vmbru]

It must be the 5% rule for us, we had 11 backups work then got the 1115 disk full message tonight.

We were running smooth for 1 month, not much data storage increase.

Patiently awaiting KB's on tune2fs.

What about Defrag's, should we stop doing this on our VM's? Could defrags and the slabs and the 5% rule be our issue?

[admin]

here is the link to the KB

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=102760...

[vmbru]

I can confirm this works for us. In the past... I was using 1.36TB for datastore, re-configured for 1TB, then got the below error after getting to the 5% range:

9/17/2010 7:58:07 AM: Normal backup using Backup Job 1

9/17/2010 7:58:11 AM: Copying RADDON SERVER PC687

9/17/2010 7:58:25 AM: Not enough disk space for selected files (short by about 33 K).

9/17/2010 7:58:25 AM: Task incomplete

9/17/2010 7:58:25 AM: Remaining: 5 files, 74.5 GB

9/17/2010 7:58:25 AM: Completed: 0 files, zero KB

9/17/2010 7:58:25 AM: Performance: 0.0 MB/minute

9/17/2010 7:58:25 AM: Duration: 00:00:19 (00:00:19 idle/loading/preparing)

...then made the required tweak and now backups are resuming (see below).

-

---

9/17/2010 12:34:36 PM: Normal backup using Backup Job 1

9/17/2010 12:34:41 PM: Copying RADDON SERVER PC687

9/17/2010 12:34:59 PM: Performing incremental back up of disk "[DataStore1] RADDON SERVER PC687/RADDON SERVER PC687-flat.vmdk" using "SCSI Hot-Add"

9/17/2010 12:37:43 PM: Task completed successfully

9/17/2010 12:37:43 PM: Completed: 5 files, 74.5 GB

9/17/2010 12:37:43 PM: Performance: 27906.5 MB/minute

9/17/2010 12:37:43 PM: Duration: 00:03:07 (00:00:22 idle/loading/preparing)

Thanks Azmir! Just allow us to go over the 1TB limit someday...maybe for 2.0

[vmbru]

Not sure if tweak is culprit but Reclaim has been running for over 24 hours. Seems to be stuck at 68%, we have had backups, reclaims and IC's since the tweak. Just never seen the reclaim take this long. I'll give it to after lunch then a reboot I guess.

[squebel]

Made the change on our appliances as well and backups picked back up. However, I'm running into "disk full" messages again even when there is nearly 80GB of free space on disk. It also seems that whenver I get a "disk full" message for just one vm, the backup process screatches to a halt for the rest of the vm's. It's not until a reclamation job runs that they will start again.

[vmbru]

Right, same here...and it "should" start the reclaim immediately too, don't wait till backup window closes to start it.

Frustrating.

vmbru

[squebel]

Frustrating for sure. I have another appliance with 150GB of free space and it threw a "disk full" last night bringing everything to a screetching halt.

[FishServe]

Can anyone else confirm if this fix has worked for them? We are down to a reported 650MB and backups are still failing even after making the change

[vmbru]

650MB? Way too low.

It works fine using vdr 2, you need about 150GB free for vdr to operate without issue or 5% of total space, go with latter.

[ugob]

If I put my VDR datastore on tape (VDR 2.0.1.2374), with software+hardware compression, should the compression algorithm be able to compress empty blocks with almost 100% compression rate?  There should be plenty of free blocks because I reduced considerably the retention policy (from 7 days to 1).

Thanks,