Andrew Quintana wrote:
> What you are doing with the script below is deleting the savesets from
> the media database, not freeing up any space on the disk itself.  You're
> actually halfway there, once you delete the media database entries you
> need to remove any savesets from the disk that do not have any database
> entries.  You just need to add an additional line to your script:
> 
> nsrstage -C -V [volumename]
> 
> When this is run from the command line (either manually or via a script
> or batch file), it will delete any savesets on the specified volume that
> do not have any corresponding media database entries.  Note that you
> will get an error if the volume is active at the time, you need to run
> it when that volume is idle.
> 
> I have to wonder why you're doing this to clean up space on a file-type
> device.  Are you cloning to tape before you delete from the disk volume?
> If so, maybe you should be staging rather than cloning, it will copy and
> then delete from the disk in essentially one step.  If you prefer
> cloning (maybe you're using the automated savegroup cloning), maybe you
> should be adjusting your retention period to automatically clear off
> savesets after a specified time.  Note that if you do this, your clones
> will have the same retention period as the orginals unless you are
> running 7.3.x or 7.4, and specify a longer retention period for your
> clone pool.
> 

There is some merit in doing it this way. The way I see it, it boils
down to two questions:

(1) When do you want to have the data written to tape?  Answer: As soon
as possible, in order to get it safer.

(2) When do you want to remove the save sets from disk?  Answer: At the
last minute, right at the time when you want to make space for another
backup, so as to gain the maximum benefit from disk based devices.

Staging accomplishes neither of these. If you stage early you don't get
the benefit of fast access to data on disk devices. If you stage later
it might take too long and delay the next backup. So cloning it off as
early as possible followed by deleting using nsrmm and reclaiming space
is the optimum strategy. Problem is you need a good script to achieve this.

It is easier at 7.3.x and above than it was at 7.2.x, but still not a
trivial task.

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