Basics – Showing NetWorker Dependencies

This well and truly falls into the “old dog learns new trick” category.

During a discussion last week about how NetWorker tracks dependencies (a topic near to my heart), someone mentioned a way to get NetWorker to quickly show dependencies between savesets using nsrim. This is something I’d never known about! Instead, in the past, I’d built my own scripts/utilities to let me display dependency trees for backup chains. It turns out all that effort was unnecessary.

The trick, it seems, is to get nsrim to run a check for a client in verbose mode, but so that you don’t modify what you’re looking at, you use the -n option to merely display information.

Here’s what the command and output looks like:

$ nsrim -nv -c abydos
62172:nsrim: nsrim has started at Sun May 10 16:55:56 2020.
86069:nsrim: Processing 1 clients
abydos.turbamentis.int:/, 10 browsable cycle(s)
4234382534  3/07/20  f     165375 files 7086 MB browse
2237980231  3/08/20  i        145 files  178 MB browse
 694562759  3/09/20  i        131 files  181 MB browse
3731325255  3/10/20  i        135 files  183 MB browse
2590560967  3/11/20  i        135 files  176 MB browse
1399465031  3/12/20  i        128 files  122 MB browse
 275477959  3/13/20  i        135 files  131 MB browse
4251764551  3/14/20  f     165375 files 7085 MB browse
3077445831  3/15/20  i       2325 files  679 MB browse
1953458759  3/16/20  i        129 files  123 MB browse
 795917255  3/17/20  i        139 files  182 MB browse
3933343047  3/18/20  i        137 files  174 MB browse
2809355975  3/19/20  i        131 files  177 MB browse
1668591687  3/20/20  i      66261 files  938 MB browse
 645267910  3/21/20  f     165385 files 7088 MB browse
3799470918  3/22/20  i        145 files  179 MB browse
2625152199  3/23/20  i        134 files  181 MB browse
1501165127  3/24/20  i        132 files  184 MB browse
 343623622  3/25/20  i        134 files  177 MB browse
3447494982  3/26/20  i        132 files  171 MB browse
2306730695  3/27/20  i        140 files  183 MB browse
3716103239  3/28/20  f     165385 files 7087 MB browse
2625670599  3/29/20  i        141 files  177 MB browse
1468129096  3/30/20  i        137 files  180 MB browse
3598921927  3/31/20  i        139 files  183 MB browse
2542043719  4/01/20  i        146 files  182 MB browse
1418056647  4/02/20  i        141 files  178 MB browse
 243737928  4/03/20  i        140 files  181 MB browse
3347609287  4/04/20  f     165385 files 7085 MB browse
2072595685  4/05/20  i       6013 files  490 MB browse
1351177113  4/05/20  i         27 files 3965 KB browse
 915002967  4/05/20  i         37 files 5891 KB browse
 176837958  4/06/20  i        128 files  178 MB browse
3465226198  4/06/20  i         37 files 8654 KB browse
2391570775  4/07/20  i        136 files  188 MB browse
1116588759  4/08/20  i        136 files  185 MB browse
4237237335  4/09/20  i        143 files  180 MB browse
2928684836  4/10/20  i        134 files  124 MB browse
2375052763  4/10/20  i         26 files 9544 KB browse
1133625175  4/11/20  f     171130 files 7185 MB browse
4187164886  4/12/20  i        143 files  130 MB browse
2979291735  4/13/20  i        135 files  178 MB browse
1804973015  4/14/20  i        134 files  181 MB browse
 664208727  4/15/20  i        128 files  127 MB browse
3734525655  4/16/20  i        132 files  130 MB browse
2509875287  4/17/20  i        132 files  179 MB browse
1302002139  4/18/20  f     171134 files 7186 MB browse
 144460630  4/19/20  i        143 files  185 MB browse
3214777558  4/20/20  i        135 files  123 MB browse
2006904408  4/21/20  i        131 files  180 MB browse
 815808470  4/22/20  i        130 files  182 MB browse
3902902614  4/23/20  i        129 files  128 MB browse
2644697815  4/24/20  i        139 files  180 MB browse
1470379094  4/25/20  f     171134 files 7186 MB browse
 279283158  4/26/20  i        141 files  182 MB browse
3316045654  4/27/20  i        136 files  185 MB browse
2124949718  4/28/20  i      90546 files 1863 MB browse
1000962646  4/29/20  i        140 files  181 MB browse
3668626391  4/30/20  i       5878 files  787 MB browse
2477530458  5/01/20  i        141 files  179 MB browse
1303211735  5/02/20  f     171578 files 7200 MB browse
  95338583  5/03/20  i        139 files  127 MB browse
3199209943  5/04/20  i        137 files  186 MB browse
2024891228  5/05/20  i        130 files  179 MB browse
 817018071  5/06/20  i        136 files  182 MB browse
3853780567  5/07/20  i        138 files  184 MB browse
2662684631  5/08/20  i        133 files  187 MB browse
1505143127  5/09/20  f     171577 files 7198 MB browse
1861273 browsable files of 1861273 total, 84 GB recoverable of 84 GB total

I love the simplicity of this – that’s your dependency chain list just printed, one line after the other. The backups are listed in date order allowing you to readily see which backups depend on prior backups.

Remember, being able to map out dependency chains in NetWorker is a great way to answer that question, why aren’t my backups recycling? Other questions, too, but in particular for anyone who grew up with tape, understanding where long dependency chains were building up because of say, a failed full backup has always been an essential activity.


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1 thought on “Basics – Showing NetWorker Dependencies”

  1. could have used this one instead of mminfo (*) when looking into an issue why nsrim was running 15+ hours, which seemed always to report nothing for one and the same client for hours on end before showing nsrim output again in the daemon.log, until found that this was a Database module client that did not have its full backup enabled but still had multiple transaction log backups every day, hence the chain ended up being hundreds of thousands of savesets and ever increasing, never expiring already expired data to keep the chain intact. That one client had more ssid’s than all other 2000+ clients combined, not even that much data really.

    DB admins didn’t notice. We didn’t notice. Only the circumstantial evidence of nsrim taking forever to finish. Went under the radar for quiet some time.

    So now will take into account how long nsrim runs as it might be an indication that something might be very wrong. Also will be looking into (possible ever increasing) amount of ssid’s of a client.

    (*) mminfo for this client also took more than 15 minutes or so to run.

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