Netbackup 7 Disk Staging Cleanup

Using the Netbackup 7 Disk Staging feature is great! Clients are backed up to the staging area (e.g. Disks) and then the backup images from the staging disk are duplicated to the tapes.

Once the backup images are duplicated to the tapes, the images on disk are deleted from the clean-up process. The clean-up process chooses the oldest/expired images within the disk which have been duplicated and delete them.

For unknown reasons (based on my experience) the backup images were stuck on the staging disk. This causes a big problem because the running backup will have no enough space to store the backup image from the client, hence will fail.

To clean them do the following:

• Make sure the backup images have been duplicated to the tapes (e.g. have second copy), t0 d0 this, from the Netbackup Administration Console, select Netbackup Management - Reports - Images on Media. Select the client and click Run Report. Check the backup that has Media Type: Disk and find the corresponding backup that has the Media Type: Removable Media with the Copy Number: 2. If you have this, this means you are safe to delete the backup images on Disk
  
• From Netbackup Administration Console, select Catalog. Change the Action: Verify. Change Disk types: Basic Disk. Change the Date/Time range. Change Copies: Copy 2. Change Policy to the policy that backups the image and click Search Now.
  
• Select the backup image on tapes that is the duplicate of the backup images on disk that you want to clean up. Right click on it and select Set Primary Copy. This will make the backup image on tape as the primary copy for restore
• Change the Copies: Copy 1 and click Search Now
• Select the backup image on disk that you want to clean up. Right click on it and select Expire
• Open command prompt and run: bpimage -cleanup -allclients

That should delete the stuck backup images on disk that has just been expired.