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Data duplication and orphan BLOBs during RBS migration to SQL Server 2022

kippie cale 20 Reputation points
2026-03-11T12:35:09.7733333+00:00

I am hitting a serious data integrity bug while migrating our SharePoint Server Subscription Edition farm to SQL Server 2022 using Remote BLOB Storage (RBS). After applying the March 2026 cumulative update, the migration process started creating duplicate entries in the DocStreams table, leading to orphan BLOBs in the external store that are not being tracked by the content database. It is essentially a storage leak that is bloating our SAN without any way to reconcile the pointers back to the original documents.

Any suggestion would be appreciated

Microsoft 365 and Office | SharePoint Server | Development
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  1. Steven-N 22,485 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
    2026-03-11T13:53:52.1866667+00:00

    Hi kippie cale

    Based on current observations, from my perspective view, the suggested approach to address this issue is to avoid or pause RBS-related migrations while the farm is running the March 2026 Cumulative Update, as this update does not document any RBS-related fixes and has been observed to introduce regressions in some environments.

    If orphaned BLOBs have already been created, it is recommended to use the supported SQL Server RBS Maintainer tool to perform consistency checks and garbage collection, which is designed to safely identify and remove unreferenced or orphaned BLOBs from the external store.

    Additionally, if migration must continue, consider temporarily migrating content out of RBS (back into SQL inline storage) prior to database movement, and re-enabling RBS only after the migration is complete and the environment is stable.

    You can read here for more information: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/administration/rbs-overview

    Hope this help

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