Removing-Backups-In-Zimbra

Removing-Backups-In-Zimbra

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Contents

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Section I – General Info

As a Zimbra Administrator, you may find you need to remove some Zimbra backup labels. Usually the case is disk space is low, and you need to make room. The purpose of this article is to detail the proper method to remove a backup label.

Section II – Use zmbackupquery

First, run the zmbackupquery command to list all of your backup labels on the system.

zmbackupquery 

You will notice the list will display the labels with the newest label at the top of the list, and the oldest label at the bottom.

Example

Label:   full-20140131.001528.661 Type:    full Status:  completed Started: Thu, 2014/01/30 16:15:28.661 PST Ended:   Thu, 2014/01/30 16:15:41.762 PST Redo log sequence range: 8 .. 8 Number of accounts: 13 out of 13 completed  Label:   incr-20140130.090009.038 Type:    incremental Status:  completed Started: Thu, 2014/01/30 01:00:09.038 PST Ended:   Thu, 2014/01/30 01:00:16.777 PST Redo log sequence range: 7 .. 7 Number of accounts: 13 out of 13 completed  Label:   incr-20140129.090006.706 Type:    incremental Status:  completed Started: Wed, 2014/01/29 01:00:06.706 PST Ended:   Wed, 2014/01/29 01:00:12.496 PST Redo log sequence range: 6 .. 6 Number of accounts: 13 out of 13 completed 

Section III – To remove a backup label

To remove a backup label, you use the -del option

zmbackup -del incr-20140129.090006.706

Section IV – Use extreme caution!!!

Do note, once a label is removed, it is gone forever!

When you remove a backup label, for example on Jan 29th, 2014

zmbackup -del incr-20140129.090006.706 

All of the labels that were created from the previous days will be removed as well, i.e. Jan 28, Jan 27, Jan 26, Jan 25, and so on.

NOTE!!!
If you remove a label that was listed at the top of the zmbackupquery command, that is the newest label. Once you have removed the newest label, you have just removed all backup labels.

Section V – Good practices

a) Always remove the oldest label first; remember the oldest label will be on the bottom of the list from the zmbackupquery command.

b) Never remove a backup label by running the rm -rf command!

rm -rf /opt/zimbra/backup/sessions/incr-20140129.090006.706 

If you delete a backup label by rm -rf, you could potentially interfere with the redolog sequence, and keeping the redolog sequence intact is vital for restoring purposes.