Reclaiming Backup Repository Space

When a backup or recovery point is deleted in a Backup Repository, the space occupied by that backup or recovery point is marked as “free” and can be reused by new data blocks on the next job runs. However, the actual size of the Backup Repository may not change. The size of a Backup Repository can be reduced by rearranging the data blocks so there are no “free” ones occupying storage space. The amount of space that can be freed up is displayed in parentheses after the amount of used space. This is applicable if the repository type is Forever-incremental. Otherwise, if the repository type is Incremental with full backups, space reclaiming is not required. It is enough to delete the backups or recovery points to free up space and continue backing up to the repository.

For the incremental with full backup Backup Repository type, it is technically impossible to remove recovery points if there is no full backup after them. Make a full backup before deleting older recovery points.

Reclaiming free space can take the same amount of time as copying the entire Backup Repository to the storage where it is located (that is, if your repository size is 500 GB, reclaiming free space can take the same amount of time as copying 500GB of data to the storage where the Backup Repository is located).

Refer to the following topic to learn how to start and stop the reclaiming process:

Starting the Space Reclaiming Process

Important
Space reclaim requires at least 500 MB of free space on the repository storage in order to start.

To reclaim free space, follow the steps below:

  1. Go to the main menu of NAKIVO Backup & Replication and click Settings.

  2. Go to the Repositories tab and choose a Backup Repository.

  3. In the title of the Backup Repository, click ••• and then click Reclaim unused space.


    The space reclaiming process cannot be started if a job that backs up to this Backup Repository is concurrently running.

  4. In the dialog box that opens, leave the Interrupt space reclaim task if backup or recovery is started option selected to pause the space reclaiming process when a backup or recovery is started. The space reclaiming process will be resumed once the backup or recovery job is completed. If you deselect the option, backup jobs will fail and recovery jobs will not start until the space reclaim process is completed.

  5. Click Start. The process of rearranging data blocks is started, and progress is displayed in the title of the Backup Repository.

Stopping the Space Reclaiming Process

You can stop the space reclaim process at any time (for example to run a recovery job, move your Backup Repository to a new location, or put your backup storage on maintenance).

Before the space reclaiming process begins, the Backup Repository is detached from the product to keep data in a consistent state. The space reclaiming process stops if job that backs up VMs to such a Backup Repository is started and resumes after it is finished.

To stop the space reclaim process, follow the steps below:

  1. Go to the main menu of NAKIVO Backup & Replication and click Settings.

  2. Go to the Repositories tab and choose a Backup Repository.

  3. In the title of the Backup Repository, click ••• and then click Stop space reclaim.