HP Data Protector IDB Purge Best Practices

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Example of messages seen at the command line
omnidbutil -purge -filenames –force
Filename purge session started.
An alternative way to Filenames purge if time is limited
On a large DP system the full filenames purge done by the `omnidbutil -purge -filenames –
force` may take many hours.
It is possible to run the command on an individual host as follows
omnidbutil -purge -filenames <hostname> -force
Or for several hosts
omnidbutil -purge -filenames <host1 … host_n> -force
Using these commands effective purging may be achieved in a short time.
To select the hostnames for purging using this method, look at the output of
`omnirpt –report db_purge_preview` (see page 4 of this document for an example).
The hostnames of clients with a large “Est. Obs” value should be given priority.
Frequently asked questions about Filenames purge
Question 1:
Will the force option cause the filenames purge to remove protected data?
Answer 1:
No, a force purge will not remove any protected data from the DP IDB.
A purge without the force option looks for obsolete records for a hostname and only purges those
records if there are more than 1000000 obsolete entries.
The –force switch causes DP to purge all expired records even if there are less than 1000000 expired
records for a hostname. For this reason the command is much more effective if the –force switch is
used.
Question 2:
What happens to scheduled backups that are due to start while the omnidbutil -purge -
filenames is running.
Answer 2:
Scheduled backups will not start while a filenames purge is in progress.