Tony, 

These files are part of the catalog and need to stay where they are if you
want to do restores. There is no way, at this time, to "archive" them off.
hopefully this will be added at a future date. 

Some things that might help... 

Are you running compression? Check your NBU Settings for "Delay to Compress
Database" parameter. If it is set to "0" (Zero) you are not compressing and
should be. Typically compression of the database is about 5:1. You could set
this parameter to compress anything older than 14 days. Since 90% of all
restores are done within 14 days (typically) the performance hit you take
when you search for a restore older than 14 days shouldn't hurt too much. A
fast Master Server might not have a performance impact even if you are
searching thru a compressed catalog. 

One Caveat here - if you have been running NBU for a while, you want to do
the compression in Increments. For example, if you have been running NBU for
a year, you would want to set the compression parameter to something like
300 (300 days and older). The next time a backup runs, anything older than
300 days will compress. The next day you could set it to 250 and repeat the
process. Then to 200 and so on. The reason for this is that if you have been
running for a year and then set the compression to 14, the next time a
backup runs you will compress everything older than 14 days which could take
a LLLOOONNNGGG time. Once it starts there is really no way to stop it except
manually killing the compress's that are running. 

Do not manually compress the catalog using the Compress command. Let NBU do
it based on the parameter mentioned above. 

Another item of note, in the next version of NBU - 4.5 - due out in less
than a month, there is an option to change the files from ASCII based to
BINARY based which creates smaller images. The conversion process for a
large catalog can take a while so you are given the option to convert or not
convert when you upgrade. 

If you are running compression at this time, and you still have a large
catalog (/db/images) you will have to add disk space or expire backups. The
catalog stores information about all active tapes in your environment. 

Hope this has helped, 

Cheers, 

dave

__________
dave high
VERITAS Enterprise Consulting
702.683.7733
 
Unix IS user friendly, it's just VERY picky about who it chooses as friends
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Johnson, Tony -Research [mailto:gjohnson AT ADMWORLD DOT com]
> Sent: Monday, March 25, 2002 8:24 AM
> To: Veritas-Bu (E-mail)
> Subject: [Veritas-bu] /opt/openv/netbackup/images/...
> 
> I was looking at my disk space usage in /opt and I noticed that the
> netbackup database images are taking up a large amount of space and I was
> wondering if these are stored on tape and can be safely deleted or do I
> need
> to do something like ufsrestore to a larger disk...
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