Can you shrink the Data Protection CMS Database?

Products

• CA Security Command Center
• CA Data Protection (DataMinder)
• CA User Activity Reporting

Issue/Introduction

To help improve system performance Microsoft SQL includes functionality to "shrink" the size of a database.  Shrinking data files recovers space by moving pages of data from the end of the file to unoccupied space closer to the front of the file. When enough free space is created at the end of the file, data pages at end of the file can be deallocated and returned to the file system.

Is there any negative impact on shrinking the CA Data Protection CMS (Central Management Server) Database hosted on MS SQL? 

 

Environment

CA Data Protection 14.x/15.x hosted on MS SQL

Resolution

Shrinking of the database can be done without impacting the CA Data Protection application. However, you should considered whether shrinking is required as a means of maintaining database health or because you are running short on disk space.  It is always advisable to increase the disk space rather then shrink the DB as it is a temporary solution to a larger performance issue.