Punching Clouds

Here is a topic that many VMware customers often ask about, “How do you I delete old data from the vCenter Server database”. It’s no secret the vCenter database grows on a day to day basis and overtime some of the stored information becomes outdated. That doesn’t mean the old information is useless, as it may need to be available for auditing purposes. The vCenter database is capable of reaching some significantly large sizes, depending on the size of the managed environments. That can have an impact on the performance of the vCenter Server. When the data stored in the database is no longer relevant to the state of the environment, removing the old data can do some good.  The procedure on how to properly remove data from the vCenter database was published by VMware in a KB article that is publicly accessible on the company’s site. The procedure is not something that any administrator could perform or should normally perform as not every virtualization administrator poses DBA skills. The KB article is intended for experience DBA’s, as it deals with working with a third party relational database management system and not a VMware oriented product. The awesome fact here is that VMware has put together a video of the procedure, which makes the procedure very easy to follow and execute by pretty much anyone with the the right access to the systems involved in the procedure, including virtualization administrators without DBA skills. The video is an excellent addition to the step by step KB article.

Watch the video listed below, and if you find it useful, subscribe to VMware KBTV channel on You Tube for many more KB based video. Enjoy!

Purging Old Data from vCenter Server Database Procedure