VCSA Low Disk Space Problem - Part 2

In the previous post, part 1 of VCSA Low Disk Space Problem, I described a situation when there is no more space left on vCenter Server Appliance volumes and this server will encounter many complex problems like the interruption of vCenter services operation.

Unfortunately in some cases, you need to find some voluminous files that occupied the VMDK spaces of vCenter server and remove them manually (like large log files). In this post, I want to show you how to find and remove them when you require to start the vCenter Server immediately. So let's begin:

1. First of all run a Backup job on the vCenter Server VAMI web interface before doing any action to generate a new full backup of the VCSA.

2. Connect with SSH/Shell to the VCSA and check the remaining space on each of its volumes via running disk free command line (df -h)

3. Check every large size containers/folders and search for any unneccessary large files like old log files via running disk usage command line (du -chx)

4. Remove some of old files and check the space left again, then retry to start the vCenter services or restart its VM.

Now you can work with the vCenter Server Appliance without any problem. But consider this method as a worse-case for vCenter server operation recovery, because you need to remove files from the server, even if you consider them with low priority, and also the chance of wrong deletion of important file will be increased totally. So it's very important to avoid this method as it's possible. In the VCSA deployment phase, you must calculate first and then consider suitable storage size for this critical virtual appliance to prevent this issue.