have a file on our vcadmin machine,, taking up lots of gigs.. how do I reduce size, of get rid of??  Looks like the version of the center is 2.5.0.. Ideas, Questions, Answers???  Looks like sone sort of MSSQL file, not sure though..

This is an SQL database transaction log file. Talk to your SQL admin about "shrinking" the log file

Well,,, that was my guess also,, I guess what confused me,, was that it is on the VC admin machine. I looked on our SQL machines,, and their LDF files are there, intact,  does VMware use some sort of sql database internally to keep up with changes??  Anyone??

VCenter relies on an SQL database as its back-end. Most common implementations involve SQL Server 2005. I would suggest your review the Vcenter documentation with regards to maintenance of the database

To "shrink" the ldf file you would need to use backup sofware to backup the database and then shrink the file (which may not be necessary).

Check with your DBA.  You'll want to do one of two things.

1. Schedule Transaction Log backups of this database so that the log can be recovered.

2. Change the database from Full Recovery to Simple recovery so that the transaction log data isn't kept.

If you change the database recovery from full to simple you loose the ability to recover the database to a simple point in time, instead only being able to restore to the latest full backup.

You are taking backups of the vCenter databases so that if you loose the server you can restore and get all your perf data back, right?

Denny
MVP
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000)
MCTS (SQL 2005 / SQL 2005 BI / SQL 2008 DBA / SQL 2008 DBD / SQL 2008 BI / MWSS 3.0: Configuration / MOSS 2007: Configuration)
MCITP (SQL 2005 DBA / SQL 2008 DBA / SQL 2005 DBD / SQL 2008 DBD / SQL 2005 BI / SQL 2008 BI)

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