Holland Backup Manager [ERROR] Insufficient Disk Space

If you’re reading this blog, you know that Holland Backup Manager is an easy and efficient way to configure backups. Most of the issues I have experienced are user errors, specifically how I configured the backups. The following error is one such example:

[ERROR] Insufficient Disk Space. 1.10TB required, but only 755.42GB available on /backups

At first glance, the obvious solution is to add more disk space, but my compressed backups were 600GB. There is enough disk space. Why did the backup fail if it had enough disk space?

The answer lies within the first part of /var/log/holland/holland.log.

2023-03-06 02:05:01,884 PID-3271 [INFO] --- Starting backup run ---
2023-03-06 02:05:01,888 PID-3271 [INFO] Creating backup path /backups/xtrabackupinc1/20230306_020501
2023-03-06 02:05:01,947 PID-3271 [INFO] * Generating mysql option file: /backups/xtrabackupinc1/20230306_020501/my.cnf
2023-03-06 02:05:01,948 PID-3271 [INFO]   + Added !include /etc/my.cnf
2023-03-06 02:05:01,948 PID-3271 [INFO]   + Added !include /root/.bkp.cnf
2023-03-06 02:05:01,953 PID-3271 [INFO] No backups purged
2023-03-06 02:05:01,970 PID-3271 [INFO] Estimated Backup Size: 2.20TB
2023-03-06 02:05:01,972 PID-3271 [INFO] Adjusting estimated size by 0.50 to 1.10TB

Here, Holland Backup Manager is adjusting the estimated size by 50% to 1.1TB. This estimation is controlled by the Holland configuration option, estimated-size-factor. It specifies the scale at which Holland will decide if there is enough disk space for the backup file. After Holland 1.1.1, this will be the default if Holland cannot estimate the backup size based on previous ones.

This error occurred on a new server running Holland Backup Manager 1.1.10. My only explanation for Holland defaulting to the estimated size factor is that there was not enough historical data for the estimation.

Insufficient Disk Space Solution for Holland Backup Manager

The fix was as simple as changing the value in the Holland backupset configuration files.

[holland:backup]
plugin = xtrabackup
backups-to-keep = 2
auto-purge-failures = yes
purge-policy = before-backup
estimated-size-factor = .25 # changed from 0.5 to 0.25

Now, the backup successfully starts since Holland has decided there is enough disk space.

[INFO] --- Starting backup run ---
2023-03-14 02:05:01,638 PID-1882 [INFO] Creating backup path /backups/xtrabackupinc1/20230314_020501
2023-03-14 02:05:01,726 PID-1882 [INFO] * Generating mysql option file: /backups/xtrabackupinc1/20230314_020501/my.cnf
2023-03-14 02:05:01,726 PID-1882 [INFO]   + Added !include /etc/my.cnf
2023-03-14 02:05:01,726 PID-1882[INFO]   + Added !include /root/.bkp.cnf
2023-03-14 02:05:01,735 PID-1882 [INFO] No backups purged
2023-03-14 02:05:01,784 PID-1882 [INFO] Estimated Backup Size: 2.21TB
2023-03-14 02:05:01,786 PID-1882 [INFO] Adjusting estimated size by 0.25 to 564.55GB
2023-03-14 02:05:01,786 PID-1882 [INFO] Starting backup[xtrabackupinc1/20230314_020501] via plugin xtrabackup

Visit Holland Backup Manager’s website for a list of available options. For questions or more information, please contact us.