Purging storage blobs

Purging blobs improves performance and ensures sufficient free space for new blobs.

Before you begin

Incomplete or corrupted blobs are purged according to the same settings as payload data. Incomplete or corrupted blobs can be created by a malfunction, such as the following circumstances:
  • The computer that hosts AS4 Microservice fails while the file is being transferred
  • The file system server or client fails while the file is being transferred onto the file system
  • Low disk space, which can cause incomplete file transfers
Note: You can also delete storage items with the IBM® Sterling B2B Integrator storage adapter.

When a blob is created in the storage system, the existence of the blob and its contents are determined by the blob's lifespan settings. For more information, see Data lifespan. Blobs are purged after their lifespan expires. Purging is also called reaping.

Your planning for purging includes the following considerations:

  • Determine the length of time that is required for data blobs to continue to be available. Some data is required for audits for several years. Other data is not required to be stored beyond confirmation of receipt. Blobs are reaped the day after the date the lifespan specifies (not on the specified date).
  • Determine what blob data you would like to save as files in a directory outside of AS4 Microservice.
  • Consider your file system capacity relative to usage and expected volume.
  • Calculate the length of time your capacity serves the expected volume.

About this task

Purge settings include the following settings:

  • Reaper settings

    These settings control the operation of the reaper. For more information, see Reaper.

  • Lifespan settings

    These settings control what data gets purged. For more information, see Data lifespan.

Purge settings can be configured at the variant level when the variant is provisioned. The variant level purge settings can be overridden by using the storage -purge command.

Procedure

  1. Open the install_dir\Members\bin directory.
  2. Type the following command: 
    execute storage purge
    A list of known buckets is returned.
  3. At the prompt Choose storage bucket name. Enter selection number., type the number corresponding to the bucket you want to purge.
    A list of Service Names that are known for that bucket on the node is returned.
  4. At the prompt Enter maximum lifespan for blobs, in days (30), type how long you want the blobs in the bucket to stay in storage before they are purged. The default value is 30.
  5. At the prompt Specify alternate reaper delay time? [y|n] (n), type how frequently you want the reaper to run. The default value is 60 minutes.
  6. Confirm that the values define the purge configuration correctly. If so, answer the following question Accept configuration [y|n]: y. If the values do not define the configuration correctly, type n to change the values.
    Important: If performance is degraded, you can increase the size of your file system.