Releasing file system space in an IBM Spectrum Protect environment

Content

Most commonly, file space issues occur in storage environments where data has been backed up for months or years before the system administrator decides to enable data encryption. In this situation, most of the file system space is reserved for deduplicated data. However, encrypted data is not deduplicated. Therefore, the file system might lack sufficient space for the encrypted, non-deduplicated data.

Recognizing issues with file system space

To detect issues with file system space, take one or more of the following actions:

• On the Operations Center Overviews page, review the Clients section. If the circular chart shows a large percentage of clients at risk, backup operations are not occurring as scheduled, and the reason might be a lack of file space.
  
  
• Watch for error messages that indicate a failure of client backup operations due to a lack of space.
• To determine the amount of free space in a file system, issue the following command:
  
show sdpool pool_name

  where pool_name specifies the name of the storage pool. For example, if server is named SERVER1 and the storage pool is named CONPOOL, issue the following command:
  
SERVER1>SHOW SDPOOL CONPOOL


In the output, the amount of free space in the file system is displayed in the FsFreeSpace field.

Procedure

To release file system space, complete the following steps:

1. Determine which containers in your storage environment have the largest amount of free space by running the QUERY CONTAINER command with the FORMAT=DETAILED option:

query container stgpool=pool_name format=detailed

where pool_name specifies the name of the storage pool.

The output lists all containers in the storage pool and includes the amount of free space in each container.

2. For the containers that have the largest amount of free space, run the MOVE CONTAINER command and specify the DEFRAG=YES option.

For example, if container 0001.DCF is located in the data1/storage/dir1 storage pool directory, you would issue the following command:

move container data1/storage/dir1/0001.dcf defrag=yes


Result

When you run the MOVE CONTAINER command, the data in the container is moved. After all of the data is moved, the container is empty and its state changes to pending. After about 24 hours, the container is deleted and file system space is released.

What to do next

You can take the following actions to verify that space is released and that backup operations are running on schedule:

• Immediately after you run the MOVE CONTAINER command, to verify that data is being moved out of the container, complete the following steps:
  1. Run the QUERY CONTAINER command with the FORMAT=DETAILED option. For example, if container 0001.DCF is located in the data1/storage/dir1 storage pool directory, you would issue the following command:
  
query container data1/storage/dir1/0001.dcf format=detailed

  2. Review the output to ensure that the container is in the pending state.
• One day after you run the MOVE CONTAINER command, to verify that the container is deleted, run the QUERY CONTAINER command with the FORMAT=DETAILED option. For example, if container 0001.DCF is located in the data1/storage/dir1 storage pool directory, you would issue the following command:
  
query container data1/storage/dir1/0001.dcf format=detailed

  If the container is deleted, the following message is displayed in the output:
  
ANR2034E QUERY CONTAINER: No match found using this criteria.

  
• To verify that file space was released in the storage pool, run the SHOW SDPOOL command:
  
show sdpool pool_name

  where pool_name specifies the name of the storage pool. For example, if server is named SERVER1 and the storage pool is named CONPOOL, issue the following command:
  

SERVER1>SHOW SDPOOL CONPOOL

In the output, the amount of free space in the file system is displayed in the FsFreeSpace field.

• To verify that backup operations are running successfully, open the Operations Center Overviews page and click Clients. Review the At risk column to verify that backup operations are taking place on schedule.