Is there a term for having the files you don't need cleaned out of your server before a backup?

Question

System admins I've noticed, get rather perturbed when unnecessary files are left out on a server when a backup is taken; actually the same goes for snapshots, especially snapshots with memory / machine state.

All of these things are unnecessary when it comes time to take a backup; mainly because they either increase the size of the backup on the backup server, fill up a virtual or actual hdd or because they prevent a backup from being taken...

Is there higher-level abstract terminology or slang for this or is it just that which I've mentioned above.

A 'fileset' (also 'selection set') is usually the list of drives, directories and/or files to backup as part of a backup job. Some backup software allows for both inclusions and exclusions within a file or selection set. With exclusions, you prevent unwanted files from being backed up. Depending on the backup software this can done by date, file extension or regex. — jscott, Aug 12 '16 at 19:54
@HopelessN00b Oh may you and das boss are going to disagree on that...what's your advice on the matter...asside from buy some more hdds and LVM for Windows?? — leeand00, Aug 12 '16 at 19:56
As I said, if you're worried about extraneous files inside a machine you're backing up, you're doing it wrong somewhere. Maybe you need more disk for your backups, maybe you need better management of your backup exclusions, maybe you need better management of your servers so that they don't fill up with enough extraneous junk that it matters when it comes time to back stuff up. I can't say, but I'm a fan of solving the root problem, rather than worrying about what unnecessary files you have lying around your servers. — HopelessN00b, Aug 12 '16 at 20:02
@HopelessN00b That's kinda why I asked the question...if you could have set File Set to draw from (of exclusions, inclusions), you could output only what's supposed to be on the server, and exclude from it the set of files that are extraneous...that's the reason I was asking about the terminology. You could conceivably have an index of files on the server and what they belong to. I imagine you can do this on Linux since it uses a package manager, and you can just query that. But on Windows...what do you do? — leeand00, Aug 12 '16 at 20:12
It's not a good idea, or a particularly manageable scenario to decide what files or directories *should* exist on your server, and then only backup those, which sounds like what you're really getting at. Creating and maintaining a catalog of server files or directories to backup is not something you want anything to do with. — HopelessN00b, Aug 12 '16 at 20:17
I would rather have it and not need it, than need it and not have it. Consider how many people inexplicably store "important" documents in the Recycle Bin, for instance. — Michael Hampton, Aug 12 '16 at 20:20
@HopelessN00b I realize it's a nightmare...but if you could group file sets together by, OS, Applications installed, or User Files, you could re-index and determine what shouldn't be there; I'm not interested in this as much for purposes of doing a backup, but more in terms of doing a future clean up, or audit. Now my boss on the other hand... — leeand00, Aug 12 '16 at 20:27
I mean if you have users on your system, and they can be grouped together, I don't understand how this is so much different; libraries can even be in two different groups (without necessarily being in the same folder) — leeand00, Aug 12 '16 at 20:29
It's a lot cheaper and safer to just leave it alone than to go looking for trouble under the guise of saving disk space. At my previous gig, with only 1000 employees, management decided to do something similar with file permissions on our fileservers. Ended up paying consultants six figures for a bunch of spreadsheets with millions of rows, cataloging all the file permissions. This idea is similar. It'll take hundreds of man hours, cost many thousands of dollars for something you can't do anything useful with. Tell the boss to bring in some consultants to engage in this waste of time and money — HopelessN00b, Aug 12 '16 at 20:38
@HopelessN00b Judging from the score on this question, this must be a real bone of contention between people. But just for the record I like your previous comment. Maybe it depends on the size of the organization and if they can afford it. — leeand00, Aug 12 '16 at 20:51
Nobody really cares about the size of the backups, the cost of maintaining those is typically only a fraction of the cost of replacing original data. But you don't want to keep **too much** either. Because if you have it, it can be subpoenaed and even mostly honest businesses don't want that either if it can be avoided, and what you don't have (by design) you can't hand over either... — HBruijn, Aug 12 '16 at 21:05

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 12 '16 at 20:53

Data Retention Policy:

The objectives of a data retention policy are to keep important information for future use or reference, to organize information so it can be searched and accessed at a later date and to dispose of information that is no longer needed.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 12 '16 at 20:44

The possible terms for files that you want to exclude from your backups are:

exclusions or exclusion set or exclusion list

The possible terms for files that you want to include in your backups are:

file set or selection set or selection list

Note that this is not a complete or all encomapassing list of possible terms

Is there a term for having the files you don't need cleaned out of your server before a backup?

2 Answers2