asked on 5/24/2012

Backup Exec 12 GRT Disk to Disk, how to get it to delete old backups so it has space for the new?

I have an Exchange 2007 Server that has Backup Exec running on it. The only thing I am using Backup Exec for is to do a GRT backup of the Exchange stores doing a D2D backup to an External USB drive. The drive is large enough to hold 5 backups. What I would like Backup Exec to do is keep backing up until the drive gets full or almost full and then delete the oldest backup to make room for the latest backup. What is happening instead is that it fills up the disk and then I have to manually delete the older backups for it to continue backing up. Is this possible and if so how do I configure it?

Details
Backup Exec Version: 12.0 Rev 1394 with SP2
Size of backed up data: 274GB
Backup to Disk properties
Max size for B2D files: 50GB
Allocate the max. siz for B2D files is turned OFF
Max number of backup sets ber B2D file: 1
Media Set Properties
Overwrite Protection period: 1 Day
Windows Server 2008 Standard with SP1

Please stay on topic about answering this question and not our backup strategy. There is a lot more to our strategy than just this, and other than this one portion it is working well.

Thank you for your help.

Storage Software

Last Comment

Tony Giangreco

7/14/2014

Tony Giangreco

5/24/2012

Change the media retension period on the backups so it over rights old bckups as they expire. Determine how many backups you have room for and leave some extra space because Exchange DB always grows.

joelsplace

5/24/2012

If it doesn't work - good luck. I've been on the phone with Symantec many times after setting this up. Sometimes it will work for a while and quit and sometimes it never works. I've tried various versions of Backup Exec and Backup Exec System Recovery which only backs up to disk. To be fair BESR has actually been deleting old backups for about 2 weeks now at one customer's site.

AmbientIT

5/24/2012

ASKER

I made those changes and will see if it works.

Tony Giangreco

5/29/2012

Is it working?

AmbientIT

5/29/2012

ASKER

No it isn't, it still fills the drive and then waits for space to be freed up before continuing.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

joelsplace

5/29/2012

THIS SOLUTION IS ONLY AVAILABLE TO MEMBERS.

View this solution by signing up for a free trial.

Members can start a 7-Day free trial and enjoy unlimited access to the platform.

See Pricing Options

Start Free Trial

AmbientIT

6/14/2012

ASKER

Any one else have any ideas? I have tried setting it up as a removable disk rather than just a D2D folder, but I get the same behavior.

AmbientIT

12/18/2012

ASKER

We could never get this to work, ended up having script run that deletes the oldest backups every night.

Tony Giangreco

12/18/2012

We use it on mutiple client servers. It works great when you get the options setup properly. Oh well, after seeing thos posting open for almost seven months, it really doesn't matter.

jnuno323

7/14/2014

I know this is old, but it worked for me. I had to add a registry key in order for the backups to delete themselves. Here is the location.

Got to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Symantec\Backup Exec For Windows\Backup Exec\Server

Add D-Word value named, "DeleteLastRecoverySetsOnceExpired" and set the value to 1.

If you are using the deduplication option, there more steps you need to take: http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH130103

Tony Giangreco

7/14/2014

We just upgraded to BE 2014 and its working great for our servers. I ran into a peoblem like that a few omits ago and decided to upgrade since we were in maintenance.