Avamar - Bulk Delete of Backup Jobs

Hi, Dan;

I know there is one solution with special script for the Bulk delete or modify snapups, but this is restrict to EMC Support only due to potential risk.

I suggest you may contact EMC Avamar Support to help with your issue.

You should be able to change the retension policies and accomplish this. Shorten it by the time you want and the next cleanup/garbabge collection should purge it.

Example:

You have a 60 day retension policy, backing up every day, and are on day 45 and the grid is getting full. Change the retension policy to 45 days and it should remove the last 15 days.

Since the grid is getting full, it maybe a good idea anyway.

Hope this helps!

Oklier,

It does not work that way, whenever you change the retention policy its gets affected from that day onwards.

i.e If you change the retention policy on 45th day and keep it to expire after 45 days, it will be affected to the backup which will run on 45th day. Rest backup you have to delete manually

Regards

Amol

Amol,

Thank you for that clarification. I reread the admin guide and found:

IMPORTANT: Changing retention policy settings does not
affect past backups in the system. Every backup is assigned
an expiration date at the time the backup is taken. Although
you can manually change any individual backup expiration
date (page 88), this must be done on a backup-by-backup
basis and can be very time-consuming for large sites. Therefore,
it is extremely important that you carefully consider the
best retention policy for your site and implement that retention
policy before taking too many backups.

Thanks again!

We are using a script provided to us by EMC Support for the bulk delete.

Thanks

Dan

You may already know this, but I'll post anyway.

Using the GUI you can change retention, expiration, or delete multiple backups per server without having to do it one at a time.

Go to "Backup Management",  select the client in the left pane and then use either the "by date range"  or "by retention" option and select retrieve.

It will then list all of the backups in the backup history window.   Then just select multiple like you would using windows explorer and right click to change the option.   One thing I have found is that some times you have to click the ending backup twice to complete the block selection.

Unfortunately, I haven't found a way to do this across multiple servers or domains which is probably what you want optimally, but at least this way it does save some time.

Tim Feldmann answered this but I have added the Multiple Selection method I have used. and elaborated on precautions for changing save expiration, retention and deletion.

Yes, within the Avamar GUI from Avamar Manager (Backup Management)

Selecting the Radio Button Selector for "By date range" and setting a From Date in the Top Field and a To Date in the Bottom Field will display all saves in the date range for the Client if a Client is selected in the Left Column, Expansion of + to see/select Clients within; changing a Client once the Date Range is set will automatically display the records that match the newly selected Client for the existing date range.

Multiple selections can be made by - selecting from the point to start, then Shift Key + (Page Down Key or Page Up Key) or Shift Key + (Down Arrow Key or Up Arrow Key) [ Selecting ALL records returned would be a selection of the top record + Shift + Page Down as many times as is required to select all that were displayed]; there is a toggling effect for every other UP Down selection (i.e. Clicking once will select and increment in the direction desired, a second unselects, etc), so every other incrementation is unselected, which is undesirable, but functional, starting from the Bottom desired selection is the way to go when the bottom record cannot be selected. Using CTRL and Left Mouse Button will unselect those to be skipped in the selection; ALL HIGHLIGHTED SAVES WILL BE AFFECTED FOR THE OPTION SELECTED BELOW; (The TIME Column [Date of Save] should be scritinized to assure that the selected saves are in fact within the range, and assure your Date Range is Approved for Deletion in your Retention Policy as there is no undelete for deletions, although changing expiration dates or retention times back may be possible, they will be difficult unless the date range is for one specific date).

Right Click over any of the Highlighted Selections and Selecting one of:

Change Expiration Date...

Change Retention...

Delete Backup

Validate Backup...

View Statistics

Is it possible to retire the host and give a retention of 1 day? that way all the backup for that client will be gone after that 1 day retention. Is that correct or am I missing something?

Edit: Nevermid didn't actually read the first post completely. Retiring the client will cause all backups to be deleted, my bad

Deletion is instant and permanent (after confirmation, of course) so retiring the client is a valid option to minimize the possibility of human error. Which you use depends on how confident you are, I suppose.

It is possible, but you need to change the retention first in Backup Management and then Retire the Client under Administration View.

Under your Edit: note,

No, retiring does not by default cause all backups to be deleted, by default it retires and keeps all saves and allows them to be removed when the saves expire as do all backups.

Never actually thought of deleting the client, I was told (by the previous backup admin) to always retire a client.

It's possible but if you don't want to retain the backups, why not just delete the client directly?

I think the other thing to consider when removing backup's on a deduplication backup software like Avamar is that there will be many similar chunks so removing 15 days of backup's may not be the silver bullet for everyone. You really need to find data that is unique and hopefully not required as this will normally yield the most returns for risk

I have composed a script myself to identify & delete backups . However it does it in 2 steps, 1 identify, 2 delete

I have used my own logic to develop this