Purging Obsolete Filewave Data?

[ttl]

We recently did the upgrade to Debian and found that Datto currently doesn't support Debian 12.

 

Planning to utilize the backup script for the time being.

Our Filewave setup is rather large, is there any way to reduce it's size?

The goal is to make these backups much less resource intensive, if it's possible.

[Sean]

Backup are additive only.  Imagine what would occur if they weren't and you then wanted to rollback.

You could alter the rysnc in the script to use a --delete option to remove anything that is in the backup that is no longer on the server if you wanted, but that has the obvious consequence if you needed it, so not recommended as a continuous use option.

However, you could shelve the backup you have now onto another drive somewhere and then run a fresh backup to effectively start from scratch.

To help reduce the size of data currently in use, you could purge Filesets that are no longer required using the FileWave Central Admin application.  You can build out Inventory Queries to show size and then sort by size if you wanted to find the larger Filesets.

 

[ttl]

Thanks for the tip, is there a way to query for unused filesets, or those associated to a small volume of machines?

My question was more along the lines of, I don't know if there's any legacy data like old models and such that could be purged away.  I never explored the innards of Filewave because I'm not all that interested in breaking it

[Sean]

The database only stores the last 20 models, but that itself is minimal data.  Each backup will have its own 20 models though, but again this is tiny and you can delete the older backup archives, it is the Data Folder that holds the large quantity of data and this is all Filesets, from when the backup first ever ran, until the latests backup.

Probably the easiest thing to do is:

1. Copy the current backup folder to an external storage (wise to do this anyway)
2. Remove it from the server
3. Purge older Filesets no longer used, using FileWave Central
4. Run a fresh backup
5. At some point in the future, when happy, remove the externally stored copy (consider copying the latest backup instead)

Identifying Filesets by size can be done with a query.  This query has:

• 'All Devices' > 'Device Name'
• 'Fileset' > 'Name'
• 'Fileset' > 'Install Size'
• 'Fileset' > 'Fileset ID'
• 'Main Component' > 'Fileset'

Then order by Install Size.

 

If you add the following Criteria, I think that should list Filesets not used:

Worth doubling checking before deletion.  If you highlight a Fileset and choose Report, that should show all current status reports for that Fileset, which will be blank if none.