XCEND Tech Tips: Recovering lost storage space with Altiris Inventory Solution 7

July 20th, 2010

From Technical Solutions Expert Ben Markowitz:

Have you ever wondered what is taking up space on your file servers? Altiris Inventory Solution includes a report titled ‘Disk usage by file extension’. While this is an excellent starting point, the default list of file extensions may not cover your needs.

Modifying the list of extensions was achieved in Inventory 6 with the utility ‘apedit.exe’. This utility has been retired in Inventory Solution 7; it is still, however, a relatively easy task.

IMPORTANT: This procedure assumes a familiarity with Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio. You are about to make changes to your database. Make sure you have a current backup!

How to view the current list of extensions:

To view the existing extensions run this query against your database. The default name is ‘Symantec_CMDB’, in this example, the name is ‘Dell_CMDB’:

 SELECT [FileType]

      ,[Extension]

     ,[Platform]

FROM   [Dell_CMDB].[dbo].[Inv_DefaultFileXML_FileTypes]

How to add a new row:

To add new categories (row) run the following query against your database. Substitute your own values within the quotes where appropriate.

INSERT INTO Inv_DefaultFileXML_FileTypes

VALUES ( 'Backup Files', '*.bkf, *.bak', 'Windows')

How to update an existing row:

To update a category or row, run this query against your database:

update Inv_DefaultFileXML_FileTypes

  set [Extension] = '*.bkf, *.bak, *.bk'

  where [FileType] = 'Backup Files' and [Extension] = '*.bkf, *.bak'

How to delete an existing record:

To delete a category or row, run this query against your database:

delete from Inv_DefaultFileXML_FileTypes

where [FileType] = 'Backup Files' and [Extension] = '*.bkf, *.bak, *.bk'

The Payoff

We identified several file servers where more than 60% of the disk space was consumed by obsolete backup files.