Backup Exec 2014’s new Data Lifecycle Management has a hidden gotcha

Backup Exec 2014’s new Data Lifecycle Management

My upgrades to Backup Exec 2014 from 2010 have been fairly positive as far as Backup Software goes. It’s a little slicker a little faster blah blah blah. One thing I noticed was my storage was filling up and it didn’t seem like the new version was deleting the expired backups. In the old 2012 version you would go into the Backup Sets, expand the backup sources, find the backup you wanted to delete and right click on it and go delete. It would tell you if there was any dependencies and then delete everything for you off the disk.

In 2014 there is no delete in the right click option now. This is apparently due to the new Data Lifecycle Management (DLM) system. This will delete the expired backup sets on storage automatically, BUT it is OFF by default causing your storage to fill and your backups to fail.

To turn it on go to the Backup Exec button –> Configuration and Settings –> Backup Exec Settings.

This will warn you that it will now delete your expired backup sets. If you don’t have your storage correctly configured in the “Keep For” settings you could now end up deleting your backups before the next full is run. Because of this you need to be a little more carful than you were in 2012.

Now if you right click on an Expired Backup Set and go Expire it will let you know if there are any dependencies and delete the set. This also happens supposedly every 4 hours as well.

Symantec’s link on DLM