DATA volume of the HANA Database overgrowth

[Former Member]

Hi,

Last week happened something very strange in an SAP HANA database running an “EHP7 FOR SAP ERP 6.0”.

The filesystem destined to store DATA volumes in our HANA DB was full.

The original size of this filesystem was 600 GB and it is used for store SYSTEMDB and two containers: DEV and QAS.

Immediately we allocated more 9 GB in that filesystem, but in less than a minute it was filled again.

Then we allocated more 400 GB, immediately it was consumed more 200GB, then we stopped all containers and the systemdb.

After that I start all databases, I noticed that there was accelerated growth in the filesystem stopped.

I executed an backup for SYSTEMDB, DEV and QAS, then I executed the command “ALTER SYSTEM RECLAIM DATAVOLUME 120 DEFRAGMENT” for all DBs.

So the occupation of the filesystem has been reduced considerably.

SYSTEMDB reduced from 531 GB  to 17 GB

DEV reduced from 119 GB  to   88 GB

QAS reduced from 153 GB  to 100 GB

I could see that SYSTEMDB increase much. DEV and QAS increased but not much.

My major concern is why the volume DATA for SYSTEMDB grew so much ?

Do you have any idea where to look for the reason for this growth in SYSTEMDB?

Thank you very much,

Edson Alvarenga

[Former Member]

Please check SAP Note 1999997 ("What are typical reasons for significant size differences in memory vs. on disk?") with respect to "Disk > memory". A typical root cause could be a garbage collection issue due to an old update transaction / idle cursor. A restart cleans these relics and the required disk space reduces massively.