Disk Space Management: Quotas and Alerts

Oracle SES uses quotas to restrict the amount of disk space that it consumes. These administrative objects set and enforce these quotas:

A quota is set on the default data storage location as a post- installation step, computed as half the remaining disk space plus its initial size. You can alter this quota and set quotas on other storage areas.

See Also:

See "Managing Disk Space Usage" in the Oracle Secure Enterprise Search Administrator's Guide

To set a disk space quota:

Identify the storage area that you want to create or modify.
In the XML description of the object, set the <search:quota> element to the maximum desired size in megabytes.
Use the create, createAll, update, or updateAll operation to create or modify the object.
Configure the space calculator to run at the desired intervals.

The space calculator is set initially to run daily and is activated automatically. It issues a warning if a quota is 80% filled, or an alert if a quota is exceeded.

You can see alerts on the Home - General page of the Administration GUI, or by issuing an exportAll alert operation. You must clear an alert before normal operations can resume.

To clear an alert:

Remove the cause of the alert, such as by increasing the quota or removing files from the storage area.
Start the space calculator to check the storage area size against the quota again.

The space calculator changes the alerts to RESOLVED if the storage area is within the quota. Otherwise, the alert remains OPEN.
Start the resumeAllSpaceConsumingTasks task to resume normal operation.

Tip:

You can delete crawler logs and cache files. If this does not free enough space, you can create a storage area on another disk for the crawler to use. The crawler stores data in Oracle data files (*.dbf), which you should not delete at the operating system level.

To remove a storage area quota:

In the XML description of the object, set the <search:quota> element to -1.
Use the update or updateAll operation to modify the object.

Space Management Examples

This example changes the default quota on the data storage location:

Export the data storage object to a file named datastore.xml:

export storageArea --NAME="Data storage location" --OUTPUT_FILE=datastore.xml

Open datastore.xml in an XML or text editor and change the value of the <search:quota> element as desired. This example sets it to 64 GB (64*1024 MB).
```
<search:quota>65536</search:quota>
```
Save and close datastore.xml.

Update the changes for this storage area:

update storageArea --NAME="Data storage location" --INPUT_FILE=datastore.xml --UPDATE_METHOD=overwrite

Check the current disk usage:
```
start spaceCalculator
```

The next example clears an alert signalled by the space calculator.

Fix the cause of the alert. In this example, a new Web source was defined with an unlimited crawling depth. The solution was to limit the crawling depth of the Web source and increase the quota on the data storage location to accommodate the additional crawled documents.
Start the space calculator:
```
start spaceCalculator
```

Check the status of the alert on the Oracle Administration GUI or by exporting the alert:

export alert --NAME=alert_1

This XML description shows that the problem is resolved:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<search:config productVersion="11.1.2.0.0" xmlns:search="http://xmlns.oracle.com/search">
   <search:alerts>
      <search:alert>
         <search:name>alert_1</search:name>
         <search:time>Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:38:21 GMT</search:time>
         <search:type>SPACE</search:type>
         <search:status>RESOLVED</search:status>
         <search:causes>
            <search:cause location="/home/oracle/dbs/sesmain/" quota="4" size="293" storageArea="Data storage location" time="14 Jan 2010 09:38:21"/>
         </search:causes>
      </search:alert>
   </search:alerts>
</search:config>

Resume normal operations:

start task --NAME=resumeAllSpaceConsumingTasks