Shareddefinitions folder on Protection Engine utilizes high disk space

Products

• Protection Engine for Cloud Services
• Protection Engine for NAS

Issue/Introduction

On Symantec Protection Engine (SPE) shareddefinitions (\<Scan Engine>\Definitions\shareddefinitions) folder utilizes more space, and older definitions files are not getting purged. 

Environment

Protection Engine for NAS
Protection Engine for Cloud Services

Cause

SPE should have only one copy of definitions (one folder, name starting with defshome) in \<Scan Engine>\Definitions\shareddefinitions
SPE 9.x comes with a feature called "virtual definition" where the responsibility of updating the definitions is handled by the "controller" process and this process manages the copies of the definitions in the shareddefinitions folder.
Whenever new definitions are available a new folder with the latest definitions is created and the old folder gets deleted. However, in some cases, may find residue folders. There is no configuration available to have control over the number of copies as it is always expected that old copies will get deleted.

Resolution

If facing this issue quite often then follow the below steps.

1) Stop SPE service
2) Open a command prompt
3) Go to the SPE installation directory "C:\Program Files\Symantec\Scan Engine"
4) Disable virtual definition mode by executing "XMLModifier.exe -s //VirtualHome/@enabled false configuration.xml"
5) In Windows explorer go to "C:\Program Files\Symantec\Scan Engine\Definitions\shareddefinitions"
6) Delete all folders present in this directory
7) Start SPE service

Ensure that no copies of definitions will be managed in the "C:\Program Files\Symantec\Scan Engine\Definitions\shareddefinitions" folder and SPE will use definitions present in "C:\Program Files\Symantec\Scan Engine\Definitions\Stargate"