What are CONs of enabling purge on urepaired vault?

[Maxim-CADman77]

"After installing the Service Pack 2 for Vault 2012 Editions and Service Pack 1 for Vault 2013 Editions, the Purge feature is automatically disabled for all migrated vaults. It is disabled so that you can repair existing data (that might have dangling file relationships) before using Purge again."
(source - http://wikihelp.autodesk.com/enu?adskContextId=ID_PURGE_ENABLE&language=enu&product=Vault&release=He...)

When administrator tries to enable it in console the message " ...It is strongly recomended to repair data using Reference Repair Utility prior to enabling purge...".

I our database Reference Repair Utility was useless without Update 1 for SP1 (January - July).

With update 1 it start to find 10000+ entries which ARRU don't know how to fix.

Vault supporting team suggested that each dangling rlationship entry (file) was discussed by vault Administrator with the author of file to determine which file to reference.

As to me strange advice. Autodesk made system which allow dangling relationships to occur but users should manually fix them.

IMHO any manual workarounds should not be recommended for 10000+ entries!

(I'm the vault admin)

Could someone share what exactly (bad) would happen with our vault if purge would be enabled without fixing dangling relationships?

...We are not going to add disc space to vault server ultimately...

Thanks in advance.

[mikel_martin]

When purging data one of the scenerios that prevents a version from being purged is; if that version is be refferenced by other data. That version to version link is how vault stores the relationship between two files that many Vault features rely on to work as expected.

If a relationship does not exist when it should then purge may delete a version of the file that it would not have if the relationship existed.

Vault has certain rules built into it about when a relationship can and can not be created. The repair utility must follow these rules when repairing the relationships. The more versions which are purged, which may not have been if the relationship existed, the higher the likely hood is of creating a scenerio where historical data can not be repaired.

Hope this helps.

[Maxim-CADman77]

Thank you for the description. Yes - I think this helps much more than
... anti-admin warnings ... half year delay in fixing ARRU, etc.

Taking the info to account I think I can free myself from
"responsibility on behalf of Autodesk", enable the Purge and forget
about problem...

[mikel_martin]

That is an option.

It is our official recommendation that repair data before running purge.