indiegirl Posted March 16, 2006 Posted March 16, 2006 We have 116gb, of which currently 114.8gb is full 8O I got in this morning to a flood of phonecalls from people complaining that they couldn't log in - had a look at the server, 12mb free on the disk. No wonder they couldn't log in. Problem is, I can't find anything else to remove to create space - Capita were their usual helpful selves, suggesting that I tidy the backups up but "we can't suggest anything else that you can remove". Everything on the disk is SIMS related. The Capita guy mentioned something to me about using the February disk to re-create the setups folder, but I haven't got a clue if we've even received the February disk (it's probably in a big pile of envelopes on the NM's desk if we have). It'd only free up 200mb anyway. Anyone else had such problems in the past?
Guest metalmonkey Posted March 16, 2006 Posted March 16, 2006 Have to say, thats seems far too much. Our Sims folder is in total, 4.7gb Most of the space is the backups, and I only keep 2 months of backups Do you have many photos of students?
GrumbleDook Posted March 16, 2006 Posted March 16, 2006 Part of the problem is if you are using the server as a Document Server and people are storing *lots* of the letters that they send out to parents. One option is to search for any document with .doc, or .xls and see what is older than 12 months ... if it resembles a letter home or a student data file (a report that has been produced, eg set lists) then copy to another drive and zip up. Alternatively set up another installation of the SIMS.net client and make it a document server. Capita doe have some destructions ... somewhere ... on doing this. The other thing to check is in your STAR and LEA folders for old transfer files that have already been imported ... or old exams file ... get these archived out the way too.
Snuffkins Posted March 16, 2006 Posted March 16, 2006 Well we only have a 60 gig partition on the sims server and about 17 gig is used. How big is your sims database? To be honest 50% of that is our backup directory(just in case it is capita after all). I take it you don't have quite so much in the sql backup area as we do, lol. Otherwise it might be worth getting rid of them. And as for the setups folder if that shouldn't be much over a gig. Do you actually get CD's still, they stopped issueing CD's to us as soon as they started using Solus.
webman Posted March 16, 2006 Posted March 16, 2006 Download a free utility called Space Monger - it will show you visually the folder/file size distribution on a selected disk. May take a while to run through 114GB of data but it will help you pin-point any large files.
indiegirl Posted March 16, 2006 Author Posted March 16, 2006 The guy I spoke to seemed to assume we'd had the "february disk"! I thought that it was all done via Solus as well... Just found the culprit - in the following folder: Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL$SIMS\Data I have a SIMS.ldf file which is 110gb 8O
pete Posted March 16, 2006 Posted March 16, 2006 I'm using 21.9GB of 53GB on my SIMS data partition. That includes ~10 yrs worth of cruft transferred from previous server and at least 3 upgrade backups - not sure how you'd have used 110GB. Have you got a lot of add-ons bolted into sims? What's taking up all the space? Docserver, sims directory or backups? Has anything decided to spew data where it shouldn't? If you've a lot of backups on there, keep the most recent, burn the ones you need for testing / outside auditing purposes (yes, you will be asked for these occasionally) onto DVD and bin the rest. [edit - beaten to the punchline]
Snuffkins Posted March 16, 2006 Posted March 16, 2006 So it was your back-ups/ Doesn't that mean the guy from Captia was right? *Cringes at the thought* lol.
indiegirl Posted March 16, 2006 Author Posted March 16, 2006 Not really, removing the backups (there were only 6 in there anyway) apart from the last one gained me 1gb of space. This sims.ldf file has been written to today and is clearly in use daily.. I looked at it the other week wondering why it was so large. That MSSQL$SIMS folder - is that the backup one then? (apologies, I've never been allowed to 'touch' SIMS before, and it's only in the NM's absence that I'm in at the deep end)
NetworkGeezer Posted March 16, 2006 Posted March 16, 2006 We have 116gb, of which currently 114.8gb is full 8O I got in this morning to a flood of phonecalls from people complaining that they couldn't log in - had a look at the server, 12mb free on the disk. No wonder they couldn't log in. 116GB! Does that sound about right? If so then I suspect a backup operaton might of gone wrong leaving you with one or more huge .bak files in your SQL Server Backup files. Normally System Manager creates zip files at the end of the SQL backup. Althoug you can't logon touse system manager what you could do is go into the backup folder and replace as many redundat .bak and .zip files with zero 0kb files of the same name. That way SysMan won't throw a wobly if you need to tidy backups at a later stage. The Capita guy mentioned something to me about using the February disk to re-create the setups folder, but I haven't got a clue if we've even received the February disk (it's probably in a big pile of envelopes on the NM's desk if we have). It'd only free up 200mb anyway. Anyone else had such problems in the past? It doesn't matter quite so much about the CD if you have backed up S:\SIMS\Setups as part of your normal tape backup then you can repopulate at later stage though any clients won't be able to upgrade until you do. I assume you are running SIMS.net in read/write mode. If so then another area to look at is any student photos stored in the old dBase Star folder. This might take up a lot of space if you have been using SIMS for many years.
NetworkGeezer Posted March 16, 2006 Posted March 16, 2006 We have 116gb, of which currently 114.8gb is full 8O I got in this morning to a flood of phonecalls from people complaining that they couldn't log in - had a look at the server, 12mb free on the disk. No wonder they couldn't log in. 116GB! Does that sound about right? If so then I suspect a backup operaton might of gone wrong leaving you with one or more huge .bak files in your SQL Server Backup files. Normally System Manager creates zip files at the end of the SQL backup. Althoug you can't logon touse system manager what you could do is go into the backup folder and replace as many redundat .bak and .zip files with zero 0kb files of the same name. That way SysMan won't throw a wobly if you need to tidy backups at a later stage. The Capita guy mentioned something to me about using the February disk to re-create the setups folder, but I haven't got a clue if we've even received the February disk (it's probably in a big pile of envelopes on the NM's desk if we have). It'd only free up 200mb anyway. Anyone else had such problems in the past? It doesn't matter quite so much about the CD if you have backed up S:\SIMS\Setups as part of your normal tape backup then you can repopulate at later stage though any clients won't be able to upgrade until you do. I assume you are running SIMS.net in read/write mode. If so then another area to look at is any student photos stored in the old dBase Star folder. This might take up a lot of space if you have been using SIMS for many years.
Snuffkins Posted March 16, 2006 Posted March 16, 2006 No sorry misread your post . Although the backup are stored in a sub folder of that folder. How on earth did the NM let the .ldf get that big? How big is the .mdf? What have you done to reduce the size?
indiegirl Posted March 16, 2006 Author Posted March 16, 2006 the mdf is 812mb, bit different to the 110gb ldf! I haven't got a clue how to reduce the size of the ldf. I suspect it's got this big because the NM doesn't understand SIMS. Neither of us have been on any courses, etc.. and you only have to ask SYSMAN_MK as to how the current NM struggled when he took over in the school (SYSMAN_MK used to be the NM here until a couple of years ago). We were running CSE stuff until the summer, and I wasn't involved in the transfer of SIMS onto the new SQL server they put in in May last year (I arrived here in July) - I suspect that stuff was just copied over in the vain hope it'd work.
steve Posted March 16, 2006 Posted March 16, 2006 dbattach.exe /user:"username" /password:"password" /backup /SERVER:"YOURSIMSSERVER" /DATABASE:"sims" /AUTO That will reduce the size of the ldf (username and password of a sysman) But you will need space for a backup - about 300Mb
Snuffkins Posted March 16, 2006 Posted March 16, 2006 Can you run the sql backup for sims. I'm sure that'll reduce the size! Although it is early in the morning for me so i'm probably wrong again. This is the .bat file i use ECHO OFF CLS ECHO SMIS SQL BACKUP ECHO PLEASE WAIT ..... DBATTACH /DATABASE="DATABASENAME" /BACKUP /AUTO /USER="USERNAME" /PASSWORD="PASSWORD" /SERVER="SERVERNAME\DATABASENAME" IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO :ERROR GOTO :END :ERROR ECHO SQL DATABASE NOT BACKED UP GOTO :FINAL :END ECHO SQL BACKUP SUCESSFULL :FINAL PAUSE ECHO PRESS ANY KEY... EXIT
indiegirl Posted March 16, 2006 Author Posted March 16, 2006 I'm really, really going to show my lack of knowledge here and ask if I have to run that from the command line on our SQL server? (sorry!)
steve Posted March 16, 2006 Posted March 16, 2006 Just copied this from supportnet: Dbattach can be used at a dos prompt or included in a batch file. Path to the N:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL$SIMS\binn folder where N is the drive SQL is installed to. Dbattach.exe is in this folder. The command would then be dbattach as specified below: Parameters : /SERVER="ABCD" - ABCD is the name of the SQL Server to upgrade /DATABASE="ABCD" - ABCD is the name of the SIMS database on the server to upgrade. Note that if not supplied the settings from the Connect.INI in the current directory will be used. /USER="ABCD" - ABCD is the user name: SQL User for installations and utilities SIMS User name when used to backup. /PASSWORD="ABCD" - ABCD is the password for the user given /AUTO - If supplied the user interface will not wait for the user to press the Install button. /NOBACKUP - If supplied no backup will be taken of the database, and if a problem occurs, no restore will be performed /BACKUP - Create a SIMS backup - also requires user, password, database, server and auto
Snuffkins Posted March 16, 2006 Posted March 16, 2006 Run it on the server you have sims installed on.
indiegirl Posted March 16, 2006 Author Posted March 16, 2006 You absolute gems. I'm assuming that this is safe to do with users on the system??
Snuffkins Posted March 16, 2006 Posted March 16, 2006 I'm pretty sure you can run it ok whether there are users in or not. But it might be worth getting them out anyway. Takes about 5-10 minutes to run normally. Saying that i run it with them logged in so i hope it's safe lol.
steve Posted March 16, 2006 Posted March 16, 2006 Just to be safe and speed things up, I'd get the users out of SIMS first.
indiegirl Posted March 16, 2006 Author Posted March 16, 2006 In that case, I'll run it tonight before I go home. The chances of getting any of this lot out of SIMS now (given that they couldn't log in until -shock- 8.30am) is nigh on impossible... One thing - what does it actually *do*? What's the purpose of a DBAttach? Many thanks.. where would I be without this place? In a gibbering heap on the floor on hold at Capita, methinks...
Snuffkins Posted March 16, 2006 Posted March 16, 2006 I'd guess it attaches to the database to do the backup? But that would just be me making things up again , i'm good at that. You have support direct from Capita . I'm still confused how such a small mdf can produce such a large lock file, i mean something bad must have happened to cause that... Unless your network manager hasn't done a backup or an update since .net was installed, which by the sound of him may just be possible lol. Still don't know how it could get that big.
indiegirl Posted March 16, 2006 Author Posted March 16, 2006 You have support direct from Capita For all the use it was this morning, yes, we do... I thought that was what it did.. attaches, backs up and resets the lock file... hopefully! I'm confused as well, a lock file should only be the size (or slightly bigger?) of it's main db file, I'm sure.. Shall I ring Capita and tell them that I have a 800mb mdf file and a 110Gb lock file and see what they say, just for a laugh?!
NetworkGeezer Posted March 16, 2006 Posted March 16, 2006 Sorry for the double post folks. My net connection's playing up so I was posting in the dark :oops: The guy I spoke to seemed to assume we'd had the "february disk"! I thought that it was all done via Solus as well... Just found the culprit - in the following folder: Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL$SIMS\Data I have a SIMS.ldf file which is 110gb 8O 110gb ldf looks like the log file hasn't bee truncated in a looOOOng time. Has the NM ever backed up SIMS.net dbattach.exe /user:"username" /password:"password" /backup /SERVER:"YOURSIMSSERVER" /DATABASE:"sims" /AUTO That will reduce the size of the ldf (username and password of a sysman) But you will need space for a backup - about 300Mb Only 300Mb??? I think it will be a bit more than that because the SQL server will dump a bak file of least 812mb into the free space. It could be a lot more considering the size of the ldf. If your backup folder is in a different partition then you might not have a problem.
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