Reminder: Keep an eye on your vCenter SQL DB

9 February, 2012 By 3 Comments

Past two months I’ve received three calls from customers who’s vCenter suddenly stopped working because their SQL database had stopped because the logs had filled up. Turns out few people regularly check the status of their SQL database. VMware has written some very good KB articles on what to do when your SQL DB fills up and stops. So this blog post is only a wake-up call for you to check on your database.

Some good KB articles from VMware on this subject:

From Josh Atwell I got this tip: Size Matters, especially when your database is full.

Filed Under: ESX, esxi, SQL, Virtual Center, VMware
  • http://www.vtesseract.com Josh A

    Here’s a #PowerShell function written by Zach M @WIDBA:twitter that will help monitor your SQL DB size!  He posted this up recently after he and I had a discussion on this very topic.  Should be very helpful for keeping an eye out.

  • http://VirtuallyMikeBrown.com/ Mike Brown

    Thanks for this reminder, Gabe.  If folks need a quick how-to on backing up and their SQL Server 2008 vCenter database, I blogged about it here: http://virtuallymikebrown.com/2011/10/14/sql-server-2008-backups-for-vmware-databases/.  My tutorial ensures your SQL transaction logs are backed up and therefore, cleared for the next round of transactions.  SQL Server can also be configured to keep only a certain number of days worth of backups and delete those older than the threshold, ensuring you don’t run out of disk space.  You’ll need to size your .vmdks appropriately depending on the size of your environment and the granularity of the performance and historical data that’s backed up.

  • http://twitter.com/Cocquyt Fletcher Cocquyt

    Wow – turns out my vcenter DB was hella fragged

    first pass at defrag
    12-> 30% Scan Density (ideally as close to 100% as possible)
    98->32% Logical Scan Fragmentation (ideally as close to 0 as possible)
    (then the transaction logs filled up)

    re-running now
    Hopefully the vCheck script takes less than 4 hours tomorrow to make this worth it

    thanks