Need Help with Older Version uProduce Server Maintenance

[graphic...@gmail.com]

We are running an older version of uProduce, version 9.02, which we have had since 2016 or 2017.

We have no service contract with XMPie.

No one has done any server maintenance for years, so we have jobs still on there going back to 2017.

It is a huge mess right now, and I keep getting messages that the Director Server is down to 16GB of free space.

It seems that anything I do to delete old jobs in Circle or the Job Center just makes the free space get lower instead of higher.

We have the API, but I am not a developer and don't want to try to do something that could potentially be catastrophic.

We are looking for someone to help with this. Obviously we would be willing to pay for your time.

Please contact me if you have experience with this and are willing to help.

Thank you.

Blanche Brantley

Live Marketing

(formerly MLI Marketing Solutions)

[couch]

XMPie has published a recommended list of server maintenance tasks here:

https://help.xmpie.com/KBA/index.htm#t=0037%2F0037_XMPie_Server_Maintenance.htm

Bear in mind that it is designed for the latest version, so it mentions things that will not be there in the old v9 that you have.

1. run the windows "disk cleanup" tool to delete any windows temp files and old windows update files.

2. Then your first "xmpie" thing is to get into the dashboard, and delete any old campaigns and accounts that are not used or needed any more. This will delete the documents, images and fonts and print output files that are eating up your hard disk space.

2. Once you have just the campaigns/accounts that you need today, move to the job center and delete any old jobs - for exmaple delete any > 30 days old. - If you have many campaigns, this will take you some time, but persist with it. There are some tools in the latest versions that can help with this, but on v9, it is either a manual process, or write something using the uProduce APIs.

Those three things will free up your disk space. Once you have done that, do some more generic windows performance tasks like defragmenting the HDD, running SQL reindexing and compacting as described in the server maintenance technote.

[graphic...@gmail.com]

Before I started this request, I had looked at the Server Maintenance TechNote and had already done your number 1 and have been working on your number 2 for a while now, but I am running into two problems:

1. I deleted most of the old Accounts and Campaigns, but that caused a problem, because now I can't delete old Circle Projects, as it says it can't connect to the Campaign anymore so it won't let me delete it. It says:

                Unable to delete the project.

                This may be due to a connection problem with the uProduce system.
                Please check the connection and try to delete at a later stage.

                Alternatively, you can force delete.
                In this case PDF on demand and website services may remain accessible.

I tried hitting force delete, and it gives an error when it tries to do that. It won't let me archive them either.

I can't figure out within Circle how to disconnect a Project from a Campaign.  When I click the Connect link, it gives me:

                Unable to connect due to the following reasons:
                - Unknown or deleted uProduce Account

The pencil beside Account it grayed out, so I can't try to change it to a different, existing Account.

I am thinking I am going to have to go back in and add the Accounts back in.

2. It seems the more I delete, the less hard drive space I have, which is weird. I think logs or something are getting bigger as I delete files.

 I will continue on trying to see what I can do. I appreciate your help.

Thank you.

Blanche                                 

[couch]

Yes, for cross media stuff, you should delete from Circle rather than the dashboard.

The "force delete" option in Circle should work if you have already deleted the campaign in the dashboard.

I wouldn't waste time or effort trying to create the account/campaign again. If the force option does not work, raise a case with XMPie to remove the projects from Circle manually and give them a list of projects to delete.

Logs are another area where you can delete old files to recoup disk space. They're in the c:\xmplogs folder - there are several subfolders for different components of the system. You will find that many will be actively in use and cannot be deleted, but there will be a lot you can gain from the others being deleted. It might be sensible to keep the logs from the last 30 days or so in case you need to investigate anything.

[graphic...@gmail.com]

Thanks for our help.

[eko...@gmail.com]

Blanche-

TreeSize is an excellent free utility that we use to pinpoint where a file storage drive can be cleaned.  They even have a "portable version" which does not have to be "installed" on the server.

https://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free

You can get a quick visual of the disk folder which need to be cleaned.

• If XMPieData is the largest folder, try deleting extinct campaigns in the uProduce Dashboard.
• If XMPieOutput is the largest folder, try deleting job from the uProduce Dashboard Job Center.  (The XMPie Job Manager utility is supported with 9.0.7, so you can use that tool to bulk delete.)
• If you see a folder named something like "Install", it might have useless previous installation versions. The InDesign server 
• If you see a folder named something like "Backup", it might contain backup files from several years ago. These might be full system backups OR simply SQL backups which are no longer useful.

You should see significant improvement after performing these cleanings.

Ed Kotnik

121 Services

[graphic...@gmail.com]

Thank you very much. I appreciate the added information.

[graphic...@gmail.com]

So, thanks so much for the TreeSize info. It helped me figure out what is taking up so much space, which is IIS logs.

They are stored in C:\inetpub\logs\LogFiles\W3SVC1. There are 318GB of log files in that folder, going back to 2016.

I Googled and found information from Microsoft about deleting old logs which I will pass on to out IT / server manager: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/iis/manage/provisioning-and-managing-iis/managing-iis-log-file-storage

But first, I wanted to see if anyone knew if it would affect uProduce adversely if we deleted logs that are several years old.

Does anyone by chance know anything about this?

Please advise.

Thank you.

Blanche

[couch]

There is no problem deleting old log files. Logs are there to help you identify problems, or track down actions. On my servers, I delete log files > 30days old, but you can keep what ever period you are comforable with.

[graphic...@gmail.com]

We deleted all the old log files in that folder and now we have 349GB of free space on the drive. We should be good for quite a while now.

Thank you so much for all your help.