We have a central Select Server (Ver. 8.11.1.64) for our organization. We also have 18 Select Server Gateways pointed to it, each with their own Custom Activation Group on the central server. The central server hardware is a Dell PowerEdge 2850 with two 2.8 GHz Xeon cpus, 2GB RAM, a 36 GB Primary disk (mirrored +spare) and a 36 GB Secondary disk (not mirrored). This server only does the Select Server licensing.
We are getting the following message in the Event Viewer:
CREATE DATABASE or ALTER DATABASE failed because the resulting cumulative database size would exceed your licensed limit of 4096 MB per database.
The SS-UsageLogPostingService.log file shows the SQL database as not being saveable to. There is plenty of disk space available on the server (over 20GB available). The limit of the database is 4GB which appears to have been reached. We have only been running this Select Server since 2-5-2009, and it has built up a database of 4GB over the course of 8 months. Apparently, MS SQL Server 2005 Express has a 4GB database limit. MS SQL Server 2005 Express was included with the install of Select Server 8.11.1.64.
As a result, we have noticed that the server is really slow at opening the Select Server Administration Site. Is there a way to compress the database or to Archive the tables as mentioned in the Help? I noticed this version does not have the Archive function from the previous Select Server versions.
Thanks.
Was this a new installation or a upgrade of a previous version of SELECTserver? 4GB seems high for usage from only 10 months. I suspect that the DB has a large amount of unused space in it and it can be shrunk using the DBCC SHRINKFILE command.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/907511
If you aren't confortable with running the command from the command line you can download and install the Studio Express Managment studio. We don't install it by default due to the increase it would cause in the setup package.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=C243A5AE-4BD1-4E3D-94B8-5A0F62BF7796&displaylang=en
This was a brand new install on a Server 2003 system. I have installed the SQL Server Management Studio Express which has helped some with tracking the problem, but it still tells me that there is no free space to shrink the database. Hence, it stays at 4GB. The Select Server Database Setup Tool tells me that the database is using 879 MB out of 4096 MB in the database file. It cannot shrink it either.
Also, the MS SQL Error Log is a nightmare as it creates error messages every tenth of a second in this state when the database has reached its limit at 4GB. The MS SQL Error logfile can grow 1GB per day as such, so I have to trim it periodically to free up disk space.
As a fix, I simply created a new database file to absorb in the usage tracking of our 4500 Microstation + 5000 Iplot Client licenses spread across 18 Custom Activation Groups. So far this has helped, but I anticipate that I will see this occur again in 8 months or so. Each business day, I see this database grow about 10 to 20 MB depending on usage. It is not unreasonable to see this reach the 4096 MB limit. I am just looking for a more elegant way to archive the usage tracking.
UPDATE:
After rebuilding a fresh database for Select Server in November 2009, this got the database effectively trimmed down to 30MB from the 4GB max (MS SQL 2005 SP2 Express). As of today, January 6, 2010, the rebuilt database has grown to 300 MB in about 6 weeks (even with the holidays). We are a larger than usual organization (10,000 engineers and surveyors) so the database growth may not be typical for everyone but serves as a reference for large organizations that choose to do local Select Server hosting.
REBUILDING DATABASE:
If you are interested in how this database was rebuilt to preserve things like Custom Activation Groups, here is a brief summary. Use at your own risk. You will quickly see why I wish there was a more elegant way to archive the usage tracking in the database.
To rebuild a fresh database, you can create a new one using SQL Server Management Studio Express. This is a separate free download from Microsoft. Export the current working database to a script and then use the script to create the new empty database with a new name. It may bug you on some errors, but you can keep going as the errors get fixed later. Next transfer the skeleton information (sans usage tracking) from the working database to the new database using DTSWizard.exe (C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\DTS\Binn). This will capture the Custom Activation Groups, etc. Then use the SELECT Server Database Setup to select the active database for Select Server to use. It will also help work out the kinks from before in the new database. Then you will need to test the database out using the Administrative web interface and Bentley License Management Tool. You have 30 days to test in the trust licensing model. Once it is working to satisfaction, create a backup of this database using the SQL Server Management Studio Express to capture a snapshot of a small database, in case you ever have to go back to the small database. The original database is essentially a backup of what you had from before and the new database backup is a lot easier to go back to than to go through these steps again.