[sims] Sims database size

[the_quick]

Guys

 

I wonder if you could check how big is your sims database file - our was 17,5GB , each time we run re-index patch it grows, by few GB. Is that normal?

 

We are secondary school, 1200 pupils on roll, nothing special really. Few years back it was around 5GB

[oododkodkdo]

Our database is 30.5GB; Secondary School; 900 Students and 150 Teachers; Goes back to 2012; We run it a few times and grows a little bit.

[gh5000]

Do you run PARS and/or insight by any chance?

 

17.5 is probably about right depending on how much maintenance of deleting old data/attendance marks you do.

 

Ours was 30+ because PARS was storing attachments to emails sent to parents for the last three years

[kennysarmy]

Just under 8Gb - 1350 students, 150 staff secondary school.

[the_quick]

Just under 8Gb - 1350 students, 150 staff secondary school.

I envy your SIMS db

 

We don't run PARS. not sure what it is is, but we run intouch.

 

I have started reindexing patch and got error message it has timed out. But left DB in restricted user mode, so came to school to be told half of staff can't login.

Put it back into multi-user and it is working, not sure about performance yet.

 

We have deleted recently lost of student data - bulk delete, up to 2009. It doesn't seem like it shrank the size at all

[mikes]

Sorry to rez this old thread, but we have just ran a data cleanse of years of students going back 2007 - 2010 ish, (still doing more) in prep for an MIS move, but checking the sims DB backup's it seems it has actually grown massively rather than shrank! Normally it grows by a small amount but on the days I've cleansed a few years it has grown by a lot! I would wonder if SIMS has some kind of recycle/recovery bin but that's way too advanced for SIMS! It's gone from 30gb to 32gb in the few days I started doing the cleanse (it was just over 30GB in november for example!) Edited January 23, 2025 by mikes

[Steve21]

Is that the file size or actual data? Normally doing a clean-up increases the actual file size as it's sorting data around but then you can do a SQL shrink on it as it ends up with whitespace free

 

Steve

[bobsmith]

me being stupid perhaps - is that the total size including the transaction logs? - got a breakdown of mdf vs ldf?

[mikes]

LDF is 46MB MDF is 32GB. We are actively deleting expired contacts now (not that far through it yet) now that we've done the student delete so maybe that will help - I noticed the SIMS database backup file grew each night as I was doing old student deletes (a few years each night) but then over the weekend the database backup has gone down in size by a few GB now.

 

We are moving over to Arbor so it's in preparation for that, we are following the LEA guidelines so I guess I won't need to worry about the DB size at all once it is done. Our entire LEA is moving from SIMS to Arbor during the school year and I think they just want all teachers to randomly switch one day after an inset day of training?