Shortening the retention period gradually to avoid problems with growing database size
Since BigFix Inventory 9.2.1, retention period is set to 7 days in a fresh installation, so this procedure does not apply in case of fresh 9.2.1 installations. If you did not configure the retention period after installation in earlier versions of BigFix Inventory and the data accumulation continued for several months, you must enable and repeatedly change the data retention configuration to make the retention period as short as possible. With each successive import, the historical data is deleted gradually and thus problems with growing database size are avoided.
About this task
Note:
- After this configuration was applied, the transaction log is used heavily because all the data is deleted in one transaction.
- The database size is not decreased automatically. If you want to reclaim disk space that is occupied by database tables, run the command that is appropriate for your database management system.
- If the data imports during which historical data was deleted failed, increase the retention period and run the import again.
Procedure
- Determine the date of the first successful import.
- Calculate the number of days since the first successful import. For example: If the import occurred 6 months ago: 6 months * 30 days = 180 days.
- Set the retention period to begin 30 days after the first
successful data import.Example: 5 months * 30 days = 150 days.
- Run the data import.
- Set the retention period to begin 60 days after the first
successful data import, that is, set the retention period to 120 days.
Example: 4 months * 30 days = 120 days.
- Repeat the step as many times as necessary, each time decreasing the retention period by 30 days.
- When the retention period is short enough, enter the target configuration of 7 days.