MSDB database is growing due to sysmaintplan_logdetail table!

Today found an issue where MSDB database size was 4GB and the table which was utilizing more space is sysmaintplan_logdetail, now to fix it first identified the number of records present in table and the oldest dated, then deleted and truncated the maintenance plan history to clear those records, please find how all this is achieved using troubleshooting steps below,

 

Troubleshooting Steps:

1. First connect SQL Server via SSMS, then go to MSDB database > right click > Reports > Standard Reports > Disk space usage by top tables

 

It will fetch you data that which table is occupying more space as below,

 

2. In my case the max size was occupied by sysmaintplan_logdetail table, (note below the number of records are 228, these were in lakhs which I truncated following option give in below points),

 

 

3. Now if you see the number of records high, then first run below query and find out the records before particular date so that you won’t land up in filling up log space while deleting records, delete in batches, (If you just want to truncate table without going through delete process, directly go to Step 6, your job would be done in 5 secs)

 

select
count(start_time)
from sysmaintplan_logdetail with (nolock) where start_time <
‘4/28/2009’

–modify date and table name as per your requirement

 

4. Now run truncate command to remove history as,

sp_maintplan_delete_log @oldest_time=‘4/28/2009’

–modify date as per your requirement

 

Note: If you want to delete backup history then use following command, sp_delete_backuphistory @oldest_date=‘4/28/2009’

 

5. Run dbcc updateusage
(‘msdb’) to update database usage

 

6. In my case, even after deleting data, it didn’t release space, all space is showing as reserved, so I did following to release space,

As per articles,

http://sqlserverpedia.com/blog/sql-server-bloggers/resolving-very-large-msdb/

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/sqldatabaseengine/thread/d81fe528-5ce5-4d31-b758-01e716bd0ec8/

 

Ran following script to truncate sysmaintplan_logdetail table and it worked!

 

ALTER
TABLE [dbo].[sysmaintplan_log] DROP
CONSTRAINT [FK_sysmaintplan_log_subplan_id];

ALTER
TABLE [dbo].[sysmaintplan_logdetail] DROP
CONSTRAINT [FK_sysmaintplan_log_detail_task_id];

truncate
table msdb.dbo.sysmaintplan_logdetail;

truncate
table msdb.dbo.sysmaintplan_log;

ALTER
TABLE [dbo].[sysmaintplan_log] WITH
CHECK
ADD
CONSTRAINT [FK_sysmaintplan_log_subplan_id] FOREIGN
KEY([subplan_id])

REFERENCES [dbo].[sysmaintplan_subplans]
([subplan_id]);

ALTER
TABLE [dbo].[sysmaintplan_logdetail] WITH
CHECK
ADD
CONSTRAINT [FK_sysmaintplan_log_detail_task_id] FOREIGN
KEY([task_detail_id])

REFERENCES [dbo].[sysmaintplan_log]
([task_detail_id]) ON
DELETE
CASCADE;

 

After executing above, don’t forget to shrink your database via GUI or running below script,

— SHRINK THE MSDB LOG FILE

USE MSDB

GO

DBCC SHRINKFILE(MSDBLog, 100)

GO

— SHRINK THE MSDB Data File

USE MSDB

GO

DBCC SHRINKFILE(MSDBData, 100)

GO

 

To avoid recurrence of the issue, set a maintenance plan to delete history or restrict the maintenance records to some limit like 10000.

 

Hope it helps!