I’m wanting to review files on our epicor server and remove anything that isn’t necessary and taking up space.
One of the things epicor taught us is you can go to epicor data/epicor/epicor data/reports and clear out all of the XML / TXT files behind every user…(basically its like a cache of every time a user runs a report).
But, what else can I do?
I’ve noticed that there are lots of various files in the following path: epicor data/epicor/epicor data/ such as csv files, dump files, File, Text docs, Progress.P File,
Any general advice of what files are safe to get rid of OR what other people do for housekeeping would be much appreciated.
When we were on E9.05, I deleted files over a month old in the root of the
EpicorData directory, as well as everything in the Reports folder as you
mentioned, on a monthly basis.
As a somewhat good Epicorian I restart the Live appservers each weekend. Epicor wanted nightly, but we run 3 shifts.
In that script I delete all of the old server logs (\Epicor905\Server\Logs\Epicor905*.Log), the epicordata folder logs. ( backflush and global alerts ). I also delete all of the temp files. Mine are in EpicorTemp ( the –T property in your .pf file )
I have a script that removes the users reports that are over 2 weeks old each night.
As @gpayne suggests, we run 3 shifts during the day and therefore only restart all app servers other than the login server nightly, and reboot the OS every weekend.
We also clear out EpicorData upon server startup, though there are specific file extensions that Epicor told us to remove. I’m pretty sure these file extensions are everything that Epicor puts in this folder though, as I’ve never seen any other.
I would keep my hands off of the EpicorData directory, as your users may have files that they’ve marked for archive in Epicor that they want to keep for whatever reason. Epicor is supposed to delete these automatically, although sometimes it may actually not. You might also want to talk about this with each user along with a retention plan to move them out of the habit of archiving things there (I haven’t done this, but just a suggestion), and into a more formalized records retention plan before deleting files.
Make sure that you’re keeping a sane amount of logs from your app servers. These build up in Epicor905\server\logs. I usually like to keep 3 broker logs that roll when the server is rebooted just so that I have something to study when the server crashes and I have to reboot. I keep more detailed logs from my main app server, limiting to 50x 5 MB files so that they don’t get too big, yet can have an adequate amount of detail to see what is happening (especially debug information from the ABL “message” command in BPMs), and can see back several days.
Also, make sure you’re doing regular Windows OS Maintenance, especially if you’re having issues with space on your drives, especially the C: drive:
Install the cleanmgr if it isn’t already (I advise using the file copy method to put the file into the system32 directory from the winsxs directory, as it’s simple enough to be foolproof and uses minimal space. This will help delete old Windows Update and Service Pack data, browser cache, and recycle bins specifically. Normally on a server you can also disable recycle bins if you like, as an Administrator is less likely to delete something and need it and is more likely is able to restore something deleted by mistake.
Go through your Windows Error Reporting to clear out old error reports, or those that you don’t care about. There is a program for this to go through unreported items. This can be gigabytes. You can also just remove them if you like. You can also remove these and archived reports (again, more gigabytes of space) by deleting them (on 2008R2 or Win7) from C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER*. These gigabytes were graciously put in a hidden folder by Microsoft.
Clear out Core Dumps from your \AppData\Local\CrashDumps directory. These can build up to gigabytes as well. Especially check the user directories for the service users. Unfortunately, I don’t know where these would be stored for local users such as System.
Also, clear out the temporary folders in c:\temp, c:\windows\temp, and the per-user temp folders. I put these in a script to run when the Epicor client has weird errors and sometimes use it to clear space on a server, though normally the most benefit is from clearing the two folders I mentioned. Mostly these are very small files, but can fill up the filesystem database and can add up to a significant chunk of space in itself.
If you still need more space, consider searching google for more space tips, or moving things to another drive.
I found this word doc on the old yahoo group sometime ago. It contains sample scripts for clearing out temp files. I never implemented any of these scripts, but it did help me learn a great deal. Unfortunatley, I don’t kow who to give credit to for this doc.
Hello buddies,
specially @jeromy
We have Epicor905 directory on D:\Epicor905 drive. I have checked the whole properties of complete drive. I found except epicor905 folder, epicor’s temp data is stored on EpicorData folder.(.p of all BAQs, and unknown files starting with 'db,srta,libi, dump folders) contain 167 GB of data. As your word file provided above ,the scripts deletes data more than 3 days. This 167 GB data i can see is older than 4 days from today 27th. Can i delete this data permenantly so i can free more space, ?
Please guide for server space maitainance releted to temp data…
Your suggestions are much appreciated.
First you should always have backups. Second, as Neil said before me, you
know your environment better than we do so take advice and review your
setup carefully. You need to evaluate where the file in question is. if
it’s in EpicorData folder it may be safe to remove.
.p files are program files, aren’t they? If someone put them in the Temp area, they put the file in harm’s way; it’s not a good practice. I would advise not deleting any of those; they’ll of course make anything calling them not work if you do so.
No I’m not a consultant. I know what .p files are. Plus he didn’t say
what folder the .p file was located. Which is why I recommended he
evaluate where the file was. It’s not good practice to put .p files in
EpicorData --even one off fix files from Epicor Support-- but I don’t know
his environment or what others had done.
Check your mfgsys,pf config file for the -T parameter. That determines where those temporary .p files from baq execution and other temp files end up. From the graphic you sent it looks they are going to D:\Epicor\EpicorData. It would be cleaner to have them go to something like D:\Epicor\EpicorTemp so you could clean that directory with a script.
Yes @Jim_Lutz, I asked this bcoz if these files are not modified since 3 years or used by any program and in D:\ Epicor \ EpicorData folder,there are 4000+ .p files,whoes last modified date is 3 years ago. Actually we are on live 2 years back 2014 and these files are created on 2012/13(contains Training and pilot data).
Here is the Progress temp files explained. I changed my –T to an EpicorTemp directory, so I would know all of those files were temps. I changed the Bt parameter to 40960 to do more temp tables in memory and not create DBI files. You do need a lot of memory, but this seemed to speed up our system.
