There are several common scenarios which can cause excessive growth of the vCenter Server database. To troubleshoot why the errors may be occurring, it is important to diagnose where the growth is happening. In general, there are two common areas where a database can grow:
This small subset of the tables in vCenter Server account for most cases that are showing substantial growth in the database. If any other table is showing growth, file a support request with VMware Technical Support. For more information, see How to Submit a Support Request .
To verify where growth is occurring in a vPostgres embedded database:
From the output of the query above, you can determine what tables have the biggest size and from there proceed with a clean up process. You might see that the tables using more space are the ones explained in the Purpose section.
The first step in reviewing the configuration with Microsoft SQL Server is determining if space is being consumed from within the database (.mdf) file or the transaction log (.ldf). It is important to identify this first because it affects how you troubleshoot the issue.
To verify where growth is occurring in a Microsoft SQL database:
From the information noted in these fields, you can make a judgement on the allocation of the disk space. Depending on where the space is allocated, proper steps can be taken to address the issue. The next sections discuss how to validate what is causing the usage of the space.
Use one of these methods to validate where space is being consumed within the database:
This query lists all tables in the vCenter Server database by table size in MB.
Regardless of the recovery model, VMware recommends that you take regular backups of the database and that a truncate of the transaction log is performed at the same time as the backup. This regular maintenance prevents the size of the transaction logs from posing an issue to the amount of disk space available to the system. For more information on the transaction logs and how to shrink them, see:
If you are using Oracle, run this query to validate the space per table:
select segment_name, blocks * 8192 from user_segments;
Note: This assumes that the database is configured to have 8k bytes. To get MB instead of bytes, divide by 1024.
For more information on diagnosing causes to the space growth in the listed tables, see Troubleshooting growth of the vCenter Server database in Investigating the health of a vCenter Server database (1003979)