The value of "Capacity used" is greater than "Bytes protected"

Hi Tomas,

The 'Bytes Protected' is not very accurate. It is not used to caculate how much data was backed up precisely. The detail is explained in this KB.

https://emcservice--c.na16.visual.force.com/apex/KB_BreakFix_clone?id=kA2j0000000QXp0https://emcservice--c.na16.visual.force.com/apex/KB_BreakFix_clone?id=kA2j0000000QXp0

We've asked engineering to remove this from GUI as it is so confusing. But it could give customer an estimated number, so that it is stil there.

--Beta

Here's an alternative URL for the KB article that Beta was referencing.  It will persist over time even if a newer draft of the article is published

• https://support.emc.com/kb/335924 - Understanding the "bytes protected" (v5 & v6) and the "Data protected" (v7.0) values in the Avamar Administrator

Hi Zhou, Nicholas,

Thank you for the links provided. I understand that 'Bytes protected' need not correspond with the Total capacity and Capacity used values. That's right, they are calculating different things.

Now I'm trying to understand what's the possible reason Capacity used has achieved extremely high value of 20,8TB, given that the license allows to have not more than 11TB of protected data?

Well, it is not easy to find out what data is on the Avamar server as all data is deduplicated. From my experience, we can start from DPN SUMMARY report. Exporting to an excel file and using excel features to find out what clients contribute much new data.

There are also other possibilities, for example, the GC doesn't clean the old data. We will need to do a heath check on this grid.

--Beta

The license doesn't audit the amount of data on a system.. it's more like a binary switch which allows it to function when present and valid.  You can discuss the licensing amount with a Dell account manager.

Regarding why the capacity grew so much, as Beta suggested you could make use of the DPN Summary report (refer to the Avamar Reports Guide) or perhaps a more friendly tool could be the capacity script

How to use capacity.sh script to understand daily data changes on the Avamar system

Hi Zhou, Nicholas,

Health Check revealed the following:

Errors to be reviewed:

ERROR: Node 0.s selected *127.127.1.0 as the primary time server!

It's no big deal.

I have no more questions regarding the server utilization value. I will use capacity.sh, dpn summary report in order to revise the datasets. But, I still don't understand: if 13,3TB is used for the backups, used capacity value is 20,8TB, what the remaining 7,5TB is used for? OS, CP's, logs? 7,5TB that's a lot. I read that 20% (~4,7TB in my case) is reserved for checkpoint overhead. Is it true?

Bytes protected is not listing capacity used by backups.  Bytes protected = The sum of the amount of space required to restore the largest single backup on each client which currently has a backup on the Avamar system.  Used capacity is the amount of space used by all backup data after compression and RAIN.  I don't believe it includes checkpoints.  See previously linked KB for more details.

As mentioned in the KB 4.7 TB in your case could be:

- RAIN redundancy

- Data due to Retention

Not specifically mentioned in the KB but my understanding is the following would also not be counted in bytes protected:

- retired clients

- Any data replicated to grid (Clients in the REPLICATE domain)

The OS, CPs usage doesn't count in the used capacity. There might be other backup data, or expired data is not cleaned.

If you still have problem, feel free to open a support case. That will be more effective to get it figured.

--Beta

Ok, used capacity is the amount of space used by all backup data, it does not contain anything else.

Returning to the previous question: DPN summary report as well as status.dpn %Full value provide that the used space is 13,3TB

I have done the steps described in the article https://support.emc.com/kb/197986 but 7,5TB is still used for the unspecified data. Are there any other method of obtaining a realistic analysis of data?

There is a report named backend capacity report. That can be used to caculate the backup size after de-duplication. You could run it, then get the real size of all backups.

If the size is less than capacity used, that could be some hidden backups somewhere. You can open a case for support.

--Beta

root@avamar://#: mccli server show-prop 0,23000,CLI command completed successfully. Attribute                        Value -------------------------------- ---------------------------- State                            Full Access Active sessions                  0 Total capacity                   23.3 TB Capacity used                    20.8 TB Server utilization               89.2% Bytes protected                  16.1 TB

The 89.2% server utilisation value is derived from the following calculation

Capacity Used / Total Capacity (20.8TB / 23.3TB)

Please ignore the 'bytes protected' value.  It bears no direct relation to capacity consumption on the Avamar server.

Hi Nicholas,

Yes, I got it. I'm trying to find the solution of how to clean up the "hidden" backups in order to decrease GSAN capacity and make it equal to 13,3TB as it should be, instead of 20,8TB as it is right now.

Tom

I think I've got all this thing figured. Thank you very much guys!

Tom