vCenter SQL Express Database gets full very fast

[andreimuraru]

Hello,

Can anyone help me with a piece of advice?

I have a 5 host ESX 4.1 deployment, one and a half years old implementation. The database for the vCenter is a SQL Express. After about 9 months it got too big and we decided to move it to a SQL Express 2008. All was fine but after a few more months it got too big again so we used the script from VMware to purge the logs in the database.

Since then we have to do this more and more often. Right now we have to do this every week and a half, because after the purge it only releases about 50MB. We are purging almost all the logs, the cutoff date being current day - 1.

Did you have any experience with this kind of behavior? Right now the only option I can see is to migrate the database to a standard SQL version. But for 5 hosts i think this is some abnormal behavior.

Best Regards.

[Nikhil_Patwa]

Hello,

According to the vCenter Server 4.1 best practises guide http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=102210... you should use SQL Express Edition for upto 5 ESXi hosts and 50 virtual machines.

Now you already have 5 ESXi hosts which is fine as its supported but how many virtual machines are you running in total across 5 hosts, could be the number of VMs is more than 50. If the VMs are more than 50 than would recommend to move to SQL Standard Edition.

Hope the information is useful

Nikhil