NetBackup and _vxfiVspCacheFile

I've used various backup tools and one of the STRANGEST is Veritas/Symantec Netbackup. This software is strange for a variety of reasons that I may go into one day but for now I'll concentrate on one issue and that's the way it backs up files that are in use.

NetBackup has an add on called 'OTM' this stands for Open Transaction Manager and it backs up open files by copying them byte for byte into a special file called _vxfiVspCacheFile. Sometimes NetBackup does not do the decent thing and delete this file when it's done and on several occasions I have seen this file grow to some horrendous sizes. Recently I saw this file hit 91GB in size and eat nearly a third of the disk space of a server.

The simple fact that BACKUP SOFTWARE has the potential to seriously ruin your day by eating up so much disk space would seem to indicate that NetBackup has some issues to overcome. There are various ways of limiting the size of this file but I would have expected some internal logic to work out the best place to put such a file and to ensure that it cleans up after itself.

The worst situation is where the _vxfiVspCacheFile is locked in use by system and so cannot be deleted, because it's locked by system there is no service or application that can be killed to remove the handle on the file fortunately sys internals provide a solution for this problem.
On their website is a wonderful tool called process explorer. This tool will run just by double-clicking the .exe file and will show every file, directory, token and other resource in use by the system.

To kill _vxfiVspCacheFile its just a matter of running process explorer, clicking on SYSTEM then finding the file handle, right-clicking and selecting CLOSE FILE HANDLE. This allows the file to be deleted and thus gain back all that disk space until NetBackup goes and does it again......!