Remove Thumbnail Vault

[Anonymous]

Hey Community, 

I am using Vault 2018 and was requested to save some space in the database. 

I so in the instructions of Autodesk that removing the Thumbnail property can make a big difference.

Can anyone tell me how can i disable the Vault Thumbnail property? I cannot seem to find it anywhere.

Also do you have any other recomendation for such a task? 

Thank you in advance.

[Ron_Jones1122]

Are you wanting to stop creating the visualization file? 

Why are you trying to save database size? I would recommend looking into purging versions or doing a defrag before you decide to get rid of visualization files. 

[Anonymous]

Hello ronald,

Me and my team want to upgrade to a new version of vault.

We were in the 2014 version with windows server 2008 and sql server 2008.

We want to upgrade to the 2018 but it has as pre requisites windows server 2012, sql server 2012.

We need to save some money at the time. In the last month our vault started generating problems and this really affects our work so we need to find some way to upgrade. We are close to 10GB, and want to go less, due to the restrictions of sql express(10GB)

I read in an Autodesk article that removing the Thumbnail proerty can save a lot of space in that database because it is stored as an image. This can make a lot of difference with our data size.

The article:

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/vault-products/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles...

Could you please also provide some link to instructions? How can i purge versions?

[Ron_Jones1122]

Sir,

If you would like I’d be happy to discuss your data management situation with you. I have sometime tomorrow if you’d like to setup a phone call?

[Anonymous]

Dear Ronald,

Well thanks for the offer. This will not benecessary.

I understand we can have the sql server Standard edition. We just want to update to Vault 2018 as fast as possible, as cheap as possible until we have the money to buy the Standard edition of sql. Right now we only have a windows server 2012 license.

We are a pretty small team. We can survice for a small period of time without the thumbnail, since we already have the preview feature.

The problem right now is we have the 2008 version of sql version. Vault 2018 does not support for sqlserver 2008 nor windows server 2008.

.

Also we are informed that there many service packs about Vault 2014 which we have not installed. There is no need for such an extra step.

We wanted to remove the Thumbnails because we were informed that they are stored in the database and can buy us the time that we need and the space that we need.

We just want some guidance how to move forward because we are not SQL experts and this cannot be done through the gui of the client nor management console. I am just asking if there is a way?

Regards

[Ron_Jones1122]

Yes deleting the dwf’s is possible. I’ll dig up the instructions for this and send it over.

I would suggest you first try a dadabase defrag, this can be done through the ADMS and should by you some gigs. Please let me know if you’d like a screen cast on the process.

Purging versions can be done from the ADMS as well. This should also buy you some space.

If it’s just a few of you using vault,then monthly database maintenance should be enough to keep you in the free flavor of SQL.

Could you post a screenshot of your database size, number of versions? Then can be found on the main page of the ADMS.

[Anonymous]

Sorry, unfortunately they will not allow me to screenshot the ADMS screenshot.

Our SQL size is 12.1 GB. I do not have a full picture of the ADMS, i will try and post it tomorrow.

I thank you for your time and effort. If you have anything to provide will be greatly appreciated.

Kudos to you sir.

[Ron_Jones1122 · Accepted solution]

So here we go. I would recommend a database defrag monthly. You can accomplish this via a manual push, or a script. When I setup vault for clients I setup a script to run monthly on Sundays. Right click on the Vault and go to Database Defrag to run this section. 

The next low hanging fruit is purging file versions, this can also be setup to run on a script. Purging versions can be done from the ADMS as well (see below image)

Finally, if you decide you have to delete the visualization files here's how you do that First you must display the files in Vault that are hidden. The dwf files are hidden by default, you can check on "show hidden files"  option (Tools--> Option-> Show hidden files) in Vault. Once they are displayed you can run a search to query all of the .dwf files, then delete in mass. 

Please let me know if I can help with anything else. 

[Anonymous]

Your png images do not show for your post. They show as corrupted images.

[Anonymous]

Hey Ronald, my computer just finished the purge, although my sql size has not gone down a bit, it remained the same.

Do you have any ideas? My storage size though has gone way down.

Also my bad your images show. For some reason they were not showing in my browser.

[paul.gunn]

Hi,

SQL will never automatically shrink databases. Instead, it will reserve that database space for future data. While there is functionality on SQL server to shrink a database, that is not encouraged as it can cause data fragmentation and resulting poor performance. So while you may not see an immediate size reduction, over time you will see a benefit as SQL can accommodate new data without growing the database on disk.

Paul

[Anonymous]

Well ok thanks for the tip. We actually did a compress and managed to save some space.

Our Performance did not degrade that much. We proceeded with compression of log files and release of white space.