-----Original Message-----
From: EMC NetWorker discussion [mailto:NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU] On
Behalf Of dmitri
Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 2009 2:19 PM
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Subject: [Networker] Removal of older save sets

Matthew Powell wrote:
> We are currently writing our legato files to a SAM/QFS file system.
This
> means that as soon as legato writes to this directory SAM/QFS will
grab
> it and make two tape copies. So in our instance legato will see no
tape.
> Just an endless pool of disk. This takes out the whole process of
> cloning tapes to another library. We automatically get two copies on
the
> first write. What I am trying to do is to have Legato purge the
expired
> save sets and clear the space from disk. If the physical disks get
full
> then all disk space is reclaimed because I have two copies of all data
> on tape. It can get the data from the tape by way of an inode pointer
> file. It tells the physical disk this is the location of the file. So
I
> just want to know if there is a way for Legato to clean up the old
save
> sets that have been expired. This in turn will clear the data from the
> tape or at least mark it for removal so when QFS needs another tape it
> can just overwrite that tape b/c all media is expired. Do I need to
> explain any more on this or does this make sense? Thanks.


Sorry Matt, this is where I lost you completely.  Why don't you give us
some more details on your architecture?  You have NW7.4 on Solaris 10,
OK.  What's it writing to? Disk, tape, VTL?  

As I stated above I am using SAM/QFS as the disk cache that I am writing
to.

 What's writing where?  

Legato is writing its backup data to the QFS file system. The beauty of
the SAM/QFS file system is that it has a tape library attached to it and
what it does is this. A file lands on the file system. We have
parameters set up that say you have to have so many files, certain size
or time and then the SAM/QFS file system writes the disk file to two
different tapes and then is done. If my disk cache gets full it can
delete files from it because it has inode pointers that point to the
tape location. So as long as the inodes live there we have all pointers
to all data. The QFS filesystem backs itself up and we can restore the
QFS file system if we need to if there is corruption there. Then when
QFS comes back online it has pointers back in place to where all data
that is on tape lives. (There is a better explanation of SAM/QFS if you
do some research on it. I am only explaining what I know if it. )

And what exactly are you trying to achieve by this operation?  What is
the problem you are trying to solve?

I have already solved the problem. I was curious if there was a command
or utility that would delete the old save sets from disk and clean up
the media database. I had some default entries that needed to be cleaned
up that were set to expire in a year. Since Legato doesn't see the tape
then it won't clean that up unless it needs the space to write to. It
will always have space to write to with SAM/QFS as the back end. I have
encountered many people using other backup products that write to
SAM/QFS. We are the first ones to use Legato to write to it with. 

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