Alfresco Space Issue

[omkar]

Hi All,

   We have installed Alfresco 4.2 on Production and using it for 4.5 years. Recently there is a space constraint we are facing. The process of procuring new space will take long time. Thus, I need to archive old folders. Now since Alfresco stores the folders in the hierarchy of dates, I have five folders namely, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015. Thus, I need to move the old folders like 2010 and 2011 to a backup location and restore it once the space is available. Can someone tell, if this is feasible and will cause no harm or data loss?


Regards,
   Omkar

[eswbitto]

You would be better off backing up your entire content store and database. You really haven't given any details as to how your going to expand your disk space. More details are needed in order to help you with your situation. As of right now your only asking if your one idea will work. Which it won't.

The reason being is that you can copy your files to another drive and have a backup of the files, but you will still be left with the originals (including the indexes and database)unless you manually go in and remove them. You can do that, but it is a great pain to do and too time consuming. I'm just shooting from the hip here assuming what you might be faced with. If you reply with more details myself or others in the community here can help you.

[omkar]

Thanks ESWBitto for your views. To answer your doubt of "how your going to expand your disk space??", we are procuring a completely new server with larger space now. Then we will install Alfresco afresh and recover the data from the existing system.

So getting back to the concern, I will not be copying the files to another drive. Instead I will cut and paste folders 2010 and 2011, to a backup server. This will free up some space for the time being.

This may work I guess. What say?


Regards,
   Omkar V. Kulkarni.

[mrogers]

No!   Stop!   You would be deleting managed content!

First clean up the trashcans cans and make sure you have no obsolete content in <content store> . deleted.    That is the only place you can validly delete content without damaging your alfresco.

You may be able to split your content store by using an aggregating content store or some O.S. filesystem link.

[omkar]

OK Thanks mrogers. Since ALfresco is a version control system, if I hard delete some old transaction data, will it free some space? I have observed that even if I remove huge files from Alfresco web console and clean it from the "Manage Deleted Items", then still the space does not get free on the drive. When I delete files, they appear in "Manage Deleted Items" on web-console, but do not appear in contentstore.deleted folder ever.
So can you tell me if I permanently hard delete huge files that are not needed, will the space be free? Thus, do the files and their metadata exists in some hidden form (and occupy space)even after hard delete?

Regards,
Omkar V. Kulkarni.

[eswbitto]

mrogers is right!

If I were you this is what I would do.

- Do a complete backup of the repository and database
- Delete content per mrogers advice
- Create a backup of that!
- Verify the backup works (usually I create a virtualbox machine and run the backup on that to verify it worked and all my content is there)
- Now you have two backups one of the complete repository and the one minus deleted content
- When you have the new server install alfresco and following restoration instructions to obtain your backup.

[omkar]

OK Thanks ESWBitto. Since ALfresco is a version control system, if I hard delete some old transaction data, will it free some space? I have observed that even if I remove huge files from Alfresco web console and clean it from the "Manage Deleted Items", then still the space does not get free on the drive. When I delete files, they appear in "Manage Deleted Items" on web-console, but do not appear in contentstore.deleted folder ever.
So can you tell me if I permanently hard delete huge files that are not needed, will the space be free? Thus, do the files and their metadata exists in some hidden form (and occupy space)even after hard delete?

Regards,
Omkar V. Kulkarni.

[omkar]

OK Thanks mrogers and ESWBitto. Since ALfresco is a version control system, if I hard delete some old transaction data, will it free some space? I have observed that even if I remove huge files from Alfresco web console and clean it from the "Manage Deleted Items", then still the space does not get free on the drive. When I delete files, they appear in "Manage Deleted Items" on web-console, but do not appear in contentstore.deleted folder ever.
So can you tell me if I permanently hard delete huge files that are not needed, will the space be free? Thus, do the files and their metadata exists in some hidden form (and occupy space)even after hard delete?

Regards,
   Omkar V. Kulkarni.

[eswbitto]

Take a look at these links. A quick google search is all it takes to answer your question.


https://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Content_Store_Configuration#Deleting_Files

http://customizealfresco.blogspot.ca/2014/01/how-to-deleted-alfresco-content.html