The information you were shown indicates how many objects (files) that were
previously backed up from the client system no longer exist on the client
system (ie: were deleted by the user).  ADSM will send flags to the server
indicating that these files that were previously backed up no longer exist.
The server then puts these files into the inactive state on the server,
and the management class attributes for inactive files now applies to those
files on ther server (keey 5 copies for 90 days if the file is INactive).

This message does not mean that any data has been deleted from the server.
It means the state of those files has been changed from active to inactive.
Once the retention period is reached for those files (90 days) they will
then be deleted from the server.

Note it is this feature of ADSM (detecting which files have been deleted
since the last backup) that allows ADSM to only do a full system backup
only once.  All others are incrementals since ADSM keeps an active,
integrated state of the client filesystems.

Since you had 40,000 files marked you must have done some sizeable
reorganization of the system being backed up since it was last backed up.

Paul Bradshaw