This may be a bad question, and if it is, just shoot me. I'm running out of space on the backup server due to the catalog directory of veritas being over a gig in size. Each catalog file is about 20 something mb. Is there anything wrong with deleting the ones from a couple months ago (we rotate about 80 tapes)? Will this mess anything up the next time I use that tape to do a backup?
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Catalog Files 2
- Thread starter byteofram
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No such thing as a stupid question...having said that...
You can safely delete the unneeded catalogs. You can always re-catalog a tape if you desparately need to.
You can set the system to delete catalogs over a certain amount of time (Mine are set to delete after 30 days) and it should help you out space-wise.
You can safely delete the unneeded catalogs. You can always re-catalog a tape if you desparately need to.
You can set the system to delete catalogs over a certain amount of time (Mine are set to delete after 30 days) and it should help you out space-wise.
I think if I were you I'd find a place to copy those catalog files until you overwrite the corresponding tapes. If you have to calalog them again, you better have a lot of time to spare, because it takes FOREVER. If you have a workstation laying around with a big HD, just copy them there, or anywhere you have room. I had to catalog about 100 GB of data and it took 10+ hours. Not exactly the turnaround people are looking for when they need something restored NOW. Anyway, just my $.02.
Cataloging shouldn't take that long unless you had the "use storage media-based catalogs" unchecked in the Catalog tab of the Options menu in BE.
When a tape is written to, there is a catalog created on the media as well as on disc.
The catalog expiration setting that was mentioned earlier in this thread is only applicable to the copy on disc. If that catalog expires and you need it back, just make sure to set up the catalog option to use the "storage media-based" copy.
That way BE will simply run to that spot of the media and read in the info contained in that catalog text file (saves a BUNCH-o-time). This really works well if you have to read/restore from a tape that was created by a different installation of BE.
Without that option checked, the system assumes that you don't trust the copy on tape and it manually re-generates the catalog by reading every file. You may also need to use the manually generated catalog if you are attempting to read/restore data from a different backup software vendor (ie. Arcserve).
A long catalog time can also be seen if you try to catalog a multi-tape backup without doing a proper inventory.
It's been a while since I've dealt with multi-tape backups, but I think that you have to inventory ALL of the media in the multi-tape set before you start the catalog, otherwise the system doesn't understand the EOT marker on the first tape and where it should look for the next piece of media.
Hope this helps...
When a tape is written to, there is a catalog created on the media as well as on disc.
The catalog expiration setting that was mentioned earlier in this thread is only applicable to the copy on disc. If that catalog expires and you need it back, just make sure to set up the catalog option to use the "storage media-based" copy.
That way BE will simply run to that spot of the media and read in the info contained in that catalog text file (saves a BUNCH-o-time). This really works well if you have to read/restore from a tape that was created by a different installation of BE.
Without that option checked, the system assumes that you don't trust the copy on tape and it manually re-generates the catalog by reading every file. You may also need to use the manually generated catalog if you are attempting to read/restore data from a different backup software vendor (ie. Arcserve).
A long catalog time can also be seen if you try to catalog a multi-tape backup without doing a proper inventory.
It's been a while since I've dealt with multi-tape backups, but I think that you have to inventory ALL of the media in the multi-tape set before you start the catalog, otherwise the system doesn't understand the EOT marker on the first tape and where it should look for the next piece of media.
Hope this helps...
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