[p4] Reducing the size of Perforce data.

Wed May 23 06:33:12 PDT 2007

Steve,

	We do have lot of binary data. But then I remove all those and
put a zipped dummy file instead. Not in all case but in most cases. We
are still on 2003.2 and as of now we are not adding any new projects to
Perforce. On the long run they do have plans to move everything to
Subversion. 

Thank you for all your support. :)

Regards,
Raghu

-----Original Message-----
From: steve at vance.com [mailto:steve at vance.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, May 23, 2007 06:56 PM
To: Raghu Kumar C; steve at vance.com; perforce-user at perforce.com
Subject: RE: [p4] Reducing the size of Perforce data.

It sounds like obliterate is you only option if you can't change blind
corporate policies. You're going to keep running into this, though, and
it's going to get more and more painful. The backup group needs to
understand the nature of the data they're backing up and make
exceptions,
alternate policies, or new processes where warranted.

Some things to consider:
o Old data is more than just junk. For the same reasons (and possibly
more
so) that companies archive e-mail and revisions of their web site, old
code
has value. For example, in a lawsuit, it can demonstrate that you
actually
did try to fix that bug that wiped out last year's financial data. It
can
help demonstrate that an algorithm was developed in a manner that avoids
legal complications.
o Why is your data so large? Are you checking in lots of binaries? Are
you
checking in things that can be rebuilt easily? These are good places to
consider obliterating or using the +S file type modifier. With 2007.2
you
have more options with +S than just a single head revision.

Steve

Original Message:
-----------------
From: Raghu Kumar C RaghuKumar.c at tavant.com
Date: 	Wed, 23 May 2007 18:42:53 +0530
To: steve at vance.com, perforce-user at perforce.com
Subject: RE: [p4] Reducing the size of Perforce data.

Steve,

	Long after some Data becomes Junk. ;)
If backing up was under my control I wouldn't have thought about this.
We have a separate backup team who are forcing me to think of someway to
reduce the data. :(

Regards,
Raghu

-----Original Message-----
From: steve at vance.com [mailto:steve at vance.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, May 23, 2007 06:35 PM
To: Raghu Kumar C; perforce-user at perforce.com
Subject: Re: [p4] Reducing the size of Perforce data.

So you're saying you want to destroy your data so you can preserve it
more
easily! :)

Have you considered a higher capacity tape or backing up to disk?

Steve

Original Message:
-----------------
From: Raghu Kumar C RaghuKumar.c at tavant.com
Date: 	Wed, 23 May 2007 12:32:39 +0530
To: perforce-user at perforce.com
Subject: Re: [p4] Reducing the size of Perforce data.

Steve/David,

	The main reason to think of a 'p4 obliterate' is to reduce the
number of tapes used to do the backup. By doing that if I can increase
the performance of the server then well and good. I have done checkpoint
recoveries before to salvage space from db files.

	Talking of backup server I don't have one, we do a differential
backup daily and a complete backup weekly to a tape.

Regards
Raghu

-----Original Message-----
From: perforce-user-bounces at perforce.com
[mailto:perforce-user-bounces at perforce.com] On Behalf Of David Weintraub
Sent: Tuesday, May 22, 2007 08:54 PM
To: Raghu Kumar C
Cc: perforce-user at perforce.com
Subject: Re: [p4] Reducing the size of Perforce data.

As others have pointed out, there are other ways to hide the branch
information.

* You can "delete" the branches by doing a "p4 delete". This will
remove the branches from the current view of your source depot, but
allows the branches to be present in older revisions.

* You can use the "p4 protect" to hide unused branches. This is very
quick, but can be tedious if you have lots of branches

* You can completely remove old information via "p4 obliterate". This
is a completely permanent solution, and you will never get the
information back. You also won't save any database space unless you
rebuild your database from a checkpoint.

Do you have a backup Perforce server with a backup license, and if
not, why not? The Perforce backup license is free, and a backup server
runs less than $5K which (compared to your Perforce licenses) is dirt
cheap.

Why not try doing a Obliterate on the backup server, then do a
checkpoint and rebuild the database and see how much space it actually
saves and whether or not it is worth it.

On 5/22/07, Raghu Kumar C <RaghuKumar.c at tavant.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>         I have around 80 GB of data including my DB files. We follow
> early branching and there are a lot of branches that were created to
do
> development work. Is it okay if I try to obliterate these branches? If
> not is there any other way I can reduce the size of these branches?
>
> Thank you,
> Raghu
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-- 
--
David Weintraub
qazwart at gmail.com
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