This is another in the series of “I’m posting this before I forget.” Had to delete some older NetWorker save sets in order to free some space on a DataDomain DD-160 and if I don’t put these down, I’m certain I’ll forget them and to avoid having to search again, here’s my steps: (using server1.ballfield.local as an example)

1. I didn’t want to remove every old backup job, but just those for a given server that were older than 3 months. To that end, I used MMINFO from the command-line of the NetWorker server to get a list of all backups that are 3 months or older and pipe the output to a text file that I’ll use to built a BAT file for deleting the save sets:

mminfo -avot -c server1.ballfield.local -q “savetime c:\temp\server1_ss_3MO.txt

This command will give you a text file similar to the following:

MMINFO Output 

 2. Next, I opened NetWorker to “spot check” a few of my SSIDs to verify that I was about to backup older save sets as, initially, I was somewhat confused by the savetime command switch.  More about the savetime command switch can be found here.

NetWorker – Show Save Sets

Use SSIDs to verify age of the save set

 3. After verification, I edited my text file as shown below and saved it as a BAT file:

Use NSRMM to detele old save sets

NSRMM is used to remove save sets.  In this case, the command was:
nsrmm -dy -S SSID/CloneID
-d / delete
y / responds with “Yes”…if you do not specify the “y” switch, nsrmm will asked you for verification before each deletion
-S / specifies the SSID and CloneID (if there are any) to delete

4. In the command window, execute the BAT file.  Once the BAT file is completed deleting the older save sets, execute the command nsrim -X which synchronizes the media database and completes the deletion of the save sets from NetWorker.  NetWorker support advised that NSRIM should not be executed when backups are running.

5. Finally, I wanted to “clean” the space on the DataDomain manually as opposed to waiting for it to automatically do so on its schedule.  I logged into the DD and on the Data Management | File System page, clicked Start Cleaning.  In this case, after deleting my older save sets, I had 400GB of space I could recover.

DataDomain – Start Cleaning

DataDomain – Cleaning finished/more space available

As you can imagine, the backups function much better when there is free space to write to.  In addition to removing the older save sets, you may need to adjust the NetWorker browse and retention settings (shown below) on your machines to avoid the same issue again.

NetWorker Client – Browse and Retention Policies