"File system /storage/archive is low on storage space" warning in vCenter Server Appliance 6.7/7.x/8.x

Products

• VMware vCenter Server 6.0
• VMware vCenter Server 7.0
• VMware vCenter Server 8.0

Issue/Introduction

This article provide steps on how to delete files when the vCenter  /Storage/archive/ partition is full.

Symptoms:

• The VAMI page shows the warning message:
  File system /storage/archive is low on storage space. Increase the size of disk /storage/archive.
  
  
• The /storage/archive partition near or is at 100% utilization.
• The appliance monitoring reports warnings.

Environment

VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.7.x
VMware vCenter Server 7.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 8.0.x

 

Cause

This issue does not affect any operations of vCenter Server as the /storage/archive partition can be full by design.

This volume stores WAL history and is automatically cleaned up by the archiver service by automatically removing the oldest WAL segments.

 

Resolution

This volume will not register alarms as of vCenter Server 6.7 Update 1b.

After installing the new version, there will no longer be warnings in the Health Status portion of the Summary Tab in the VAMI. There will be no alarm even if partition is 100% full - as this is by design and has no impact on the running of the vCenter.

For VMware Aria Operations alarms refer article : Continuous disk space alerts for /storage/archive Guest File System in Aria Operations

 

 

You can also follow the below steps to manually delete the older archive files from /Storage/archive partition.

 

Step-by-Step Instructions on Removing Old Archive Files under Storage/archive/vpostgres

1. Take a snapshot of the vCenter Server Appliance

2. SSH into the vCenter Server Appliance

3. Run the following command to enable access to the Bash shell: (for more information about enable or disable SSH ad Bash shell access, refer Enable or Disable SSH and Bash Shell Access)

shell.set –enabled true

4. Type shell and press Enter

5. Navigate to directory /storage/archive/vpostgres/

cd /storage/archive/vpostgres/

6. Run for following command to check file which are older than 40 Days.

find * -mtime +40

7. To delete / remove files older than 40 days,. ***Cross verify the folder path before running the below command***

find *.* -mtime +40 | xargs rm

8. Use command “df -h” to display the disk space in a human-readable form:

df -h

9. Wait for 2 -3 minutes, then try refreshing the browser to see if the hard drive 13 space archive partition no longer shows a red warning.

Additional Information

vCenter Server Appliance disk space is full

Increasing the disk space for the VMware vCenter Server Appliance in vSphere 6.5 and above (316602)