Database maintenance in the SolarWinds Platform

Database maintenance is an automatic process that optimizes the size of your SolarWinds Platform database. During maintenance, the data collected for a certain period are aggregated and new statistical values, based on the aggregated data, are calculated. The data is discarded, and only the aggregated statistics are retained.

Database maintenance runs every day at a specified time. Depending on the data granularity and retention period, you may need to configure your database differently. Keep in mind that the more granularity and the longer the retention period, the larger the database.

If the database maintenance fails three times in a row in SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted, you can see a notification in the SolarWinds Platform Web Console. Click the notification to go to the Database Maintenance Statistics page. This page lists the most time-intensive operations and their success. If the page does not answer your questions, collect diagnostics and send them to SolarWinds support.

Check the database size

1. Start the Database Manager in the SolarWinds Orion program folder.
2. Add your database server and expand it.
3. Right-click your SolarWinds Platform database, and select Database Details.

   

   The database size is displayed in the Properties tab.

   

Specify the time to run database maintenance

Make sure database maintenance runs after business hours.

1. Log in to the SolarWinds Platform Web Console using an administrator account.
2. Click Settings > All Settings.
3. Click Polling Settings in the Thresholds & Polling grouping.
4. Scroll down to Database Settings, and enter an Archive Time.

   

5. Click Submit.

Adjust retention periods

Data for collected statistics are retained for a specified time. Shorten the retention periods to save storage space in your database.

1. Log in to the SolarWinds Platform Web Console using an administrator account.
2. Click Settings > All Settings.
3. Click Polling Settings in the Thresholds & Polling grouping.
4. Scroll down to Database Settings, and adjust the retention periods.

   The detailed data are retained for the specified period and summarized into hourly data. Hourly data is then summarized into daily statistics, and daily statistics are discarded after the specified time.

   The shorter the retention period, the greater effect the setting has on the database size.

   

   You can also adjust retention periods for other statistics.

   Changing the detailed retention period has the greatest effect on the database size.
   
   Assuming a 10-minute polling interval, one new entry is added to the database for each monitored object every 10 minutes. That means 144 new entries a day are added for each monitored object during the Detailed Statistics Retention period. In the Daily Statistics Retention period, only one entry a day is added to the database for each object.

5. Click Submit to commit the changes.

Launch database maintenance manually

1. Start Database Maintenance in the SolarWinds Orion program folder.
2. Click Start.