Compressing the image catalog 1

[kcavanagh]

Hi there,

We ran into a situation where the /opt mount point where NetBackup is installed was running low on free space (about 75% used and shrinking daily).

I found a tech note on Veritas web site (238066)detailing a couple of possible solutions. One involved setting the "Compress Catalog after:, which by default is 0 (or none). I set this to 7 days. I also entered the following command to manually compress the catalogs:

# bpimage -compress -all clients

The net result is I now have 33% used on the /opt mount point (so it reclaimed about 42%).

Just wondering is there is anything I should be aware of, gotcha's, etc when compressing the image catalog like this?? Would I ever need to decompress them for any reason???

TIA!

Kevin Cavanagh

TIA!
Kevin Cavanagh

 

[PGPhantom]

Shouldn't be a problem excpet for browsing backups during a restore - They will be a bit longer.

 

[comtec17]

If you are restoring data from a compressed catalog, your restores will also take longer.

 

[Stumpr]

I have compression set to 14 days.
The retention of my daily incrementals is 14 days.
This way only the superceeded fulls will get compressed.
The number of files in the incrementals is very small compared to the number of files in the full backups.
This setup does adequate compression with very little effect on restores because most restores only need to go back to the last full plus incrementals.
When a request comes in for a restore from a superceeded full backup I do these steps:
# bprdreq -terminate
change compression attribute to 0 (zero)
# bpimage -decompress -client name
# initbprd
restore the data
change compression attribute to 14

Bob Stump
Incorrigible punster -- Do not incorrige

 

[creakyjoe]

Another thing to look into, is setting up cronjobs to compress log directories, say after 7days. You would be surprised how much space they consume. For a few yrs now i've done this, no ill effects; i'm quite ruthless -

on master server -

remove all logs older than 14days
compress all logs older than 7days
bpdbm log - compress any over 2days old

clients -
similar sort of thing..

Rich