Delphix Products

We have a VDB that has grown relatively large and we have been trying to clean up old snapshots to decrease it's size.

In doing so we discovered a number of entries listed as "Held Space" what are these and how do we clean them up?

Thanks

Jim

https://d2r1vs3d9006ap.cloudfront.net/s3_images/1295169/RackMultipart20151019-6075-1py89o8-HeldSpace_inline.jpg?1445280396" src="https://higherlogicdownload.s3.amazonaws.com/DELPHIX/UploadedImages/07e0bbcd97a94a2bbca63a0c0c93c759_RackMultipart20151019-6075-1py89o8-HeldSpace_inline.jpg">

Short answer: these are remnants of snapshots that were deleted but their parts are still being used by other parts of the system..

So, you had a snapshot, and somewhere down the line you created a bookmark. That bookmark required some of the data that is in that snapshot.  Then, you deleted the snapshot.  The system threw away all the data in the snapshot that wasn't being used by the bookmark, but it has to keep that "shared" space so the bookmark will still function. That extra stuff is kept in the "Held Space (was 'former-snapshot-name')" To get rid of this, you'd need to remove some bookmarks, and then the held space will automatically be removed.

Thanks for the reply, these snapshots weren't deleted manually, they were removed by the retention policy.  We have deleted all of the old branches and bookmarks for this VDB, can you tell me how to use the CLI to identify the bookmarks that are causing the items that are being held?

Thanks

Jim

Jim, are you also using Replication?

No, we aren't

Jim, 

I had some conversations with some folks internally. My explanation above may not be quite right.  Those "dead" snapshots are more likely to be the result of, say, deleting a branch in Jet Stream that another branch was branched off from.

It does seem that we don't currently have a way for you to identify which items in Jet Stream are trying down these "held space" objects. I'm going to create an item in our bug system to track this limitation (EP-880)

dj

The VDB we are seeing this on is one of our largest and we were hoping to free up some space by removing these old snapshots. 

Do you know of anything we can do in the meantime to resolve this?

Thanks

Jim

The best I can suggest, Jim, is to try to figure out which branches are branched from other branches you deleted, and see if there are things on that branch you no longer need.  Or, put more to the point, have you gone through your Jet Stream branches, and made sure they are all needed?  It looks like they or it is holding down this data, and so if you need the branches, then you need this data. 

dj