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slanger
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
‎01-20-2009 06:33 AM

Help - VC DB reached 4gb limit of SQL Express - Cant start VC Svc

I need some help here...

My VC DB has reached its 4GB limit (this is a limit of SQL Express, not VC) I know I could upgrade to SQL Standard but I want to stay with Express for now. The reason the DB filled up is that I changed the Statistics settings a few weeks ago to keep more data and the DB grew to large.

Now I would like to log into VC and change the Stats setting back to only keep a small amount of past perf data but I cant get the VC service Running. Every time I try and start it I get the following in the App log:

Event Type: Error Event Source: MSSQL$SQLEXP_VIM Event Category: (2) Event ID: 1827 Date: 1/20/2009 Time: 9:19:55 AM User: NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM Computer: VC1 Description: CREATE DATABASE or ALTER DATABASE failed because the resulting cumulative database size would exceed your licensed limit of 4096 MB per database.

Qusetion is... how can I (even just temporarily) get the VC service running so I can change the settings and then shringk the DB... or am I screwed. There has to be a temp reg key from MS to allow the SQL DB size beyond 4GB temporarily or some other way to get er going...

Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks so much!

-Scott

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beckhamk
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
‎01-20-2009 06:35 AM

BTW: You probably dont have to upgrade to standard, you could try upgrading to sql 2005/2008 workgroup edition possibly? Check into it.

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slanger
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
‎01-20-2009 06:41 AM

I just had a thought... perhaps there are some tables (stats tables maybe) that I can just go in through SQL Manager Express and clean out. Then I can just shrink the DB size down and be able to start VC again. Anyone know how to do that? or what tables can be safely droped or cleared? good idea, bad?

TIA.

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slanger
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Enthusiast
‎01-20-2009 12:30 PM

for anyone interested...I have fixed our issue. I ended up doing the following:

  1. Mirror Server Drive

  2. Installed an Eval of SQL Server Ent

  3. Detached DB from Named SQLexpress instance

  4. Attached DB to Eval SQL Default Instance

  5. Ran script from VMware on the DB to clea out all our old stats and events (luckily we are allowed to do that currently)
    script here (note it took about 30 minutes to complete):

  6. Shrink DB using SQL Mgmt Studio Express (we went from 4GB to 750mb !!)

  7. Detach DB

  8. Copy MDF and LDF to another server temporarily

  9. Restore server to Mirrored version (before Eval install)

  10. Load DB back to server

  11. Re-attach DB to SQL Express Named Instance and restart Virtual Center Service!!!

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