Duplicated DCE backups

[NF-London]

Sometimes I receive alerts from our storage system that I am over my capacity allowance.  This appears to be due to DCE creating duplicated backups on the system.

The folder created is "synchronized_"hostname"_"datestamp"_7.6.0

Do you know of any reason multiple folders would be created?

[Cory_McDonald]

@NF-London,

I have not tested this yet (waiting on a data purge), but I believe if you have selected Synchronized AND Compressed Backup, it will create a new one for each backup, instead of adding to the existing synchronized backup.  This is because it will not pull the backup back in to decompress it, add the changes, and then write it back.  Since the file is compressed on the destination system, it can not easily have items added to it either, which is why I believe this is the case.

Regards,

Cory

[NF-London]

No I checked and the system is set to Synchronized but does not have the compress option ticked.  I don't understand why the synchronized folders are sometimes nested within previous synchronized folders too.  This increases the duplication which impacts my capacity limits?

[Cory_McDonald]

@NF-London,

It is normal to see multiple directories/files as part of a synchronized backup.  This is because a synchronized backup "stacks" up the changes since the first initial run.  For example, a Synchronized backup is originally created on June 1st and is scheduled to run daily.  There will be the original backup, which is similar to a full backup, as it contains all of the current data.  The next time the backup runs, files/folders will be added that contain the changes since the last time the backup was ran.  The data that accumulates should be significantly less than if a full backup was ran every time a synchronized would run.

There may be some certain conditions that cause the synchronized backup to start over again.  I am not sure what they would be.  I can't test it, but possibly a purge of data would create a new synchronized backup as the older data already written within the backup is no longer needed.

If you believe that multiple new synchronized backups are being created without any changes or vent that you feel would create a new one, you can reach out to your local technical support for assistance.  They will need to look in depth at what may be causing the issues with backups on your system.

Regards,

Cory

[NF-London]

Thanks Cory.  This issue happens every 9-12 months or so.  Every time I go to the storage team and ask them to delete the duplicated folders that appear unnecessary (doing it myself remotely is too slow).  They do this repeatedly for a week, then the problem appears to go away again for another 9-12 months.

The storage team insist the problems (flagged by their own automated capacity warning systems) are not created by their routines or actions and I believe this to be true.

I understand what you mean by the backups updating new changes (like Windows File History function).  I am not sure that the solution lies with our local teams but to this end I will forward all comments from this thread to the teams helping.

[NF-London]

Just a note that this situation is still happening.  My warnings are now that I am at 558Gb which is way over our 300Gb limit and I only believe a normal backup of the system is about 160Gb.  We have 4 duplicated "synchronised" folders for our single DCE VM now - each with a different timestamp, some are nested.  It appears then that these additional folders are not merely tracking changes to our system but more probably creating entire backups again.