Database size keeps growing at a high rate

[DSendersBT]

On my install of Zabbix the database size keeps on growing at a very high rate.
I have set housekeeping at 14 days for all values on the Administration -> General -> Housekeeping page, but still the database is growing by over 2 GB per 24 hrs.

My zabbix version is 3.0.1, running on Ubuntu Server.

[guzzijason]

Currently, mine grows at a rate of about 3GB/day and everything is OK. Generally speaking, the only way to decrease the rate of data coming into the database is to either 1) monitor less stuff, or 2) decrease the polling interval for items.

If you are running out of DB storage, then perhaps your DB is undersized for your needs?

__Jason

[guzzijason]

Also, just because housekeeping is set, doesn't necessarily mean that it's working effectively. My previous zabbix installation relied on internal housekeeping and struggled to keep up with the incoming data rate. For my current installation, I set up database partitioning and housekeeping is no longer a concern.

__Jason

[Linwood]

Generally speaking, the only way to decrease the rate of data coming into the database is to either 1) monitor less stuff, or 2) decrease the polling interval for items.

Or keep them less long; 14 days may be fine, though I find 7 is adequate for most numeric values needing rapid polling.

But the big win is usually poll frequency. I've had many admins work for me and almost universally they want to poll really fast, they want the email really fast. Then they sit around and ignore the alert for hours.

Seriously, though, many of the things we monitor do not need polls every 30-60 seconds. Consider CPU utilization; for the most part you can react only to long term trends, why get it more than every 5 minutes or so. Or disk space. If something is using disk so much you needed to poll every 60 seconds to find it, it's still going to run out of space before you can deal with it anyway.

Also, just because housekeeping is set, doesn't necessarily mean that it's working effectively.
__Jason

Absolutely -- I've found that as well. I still haven't partitioned, but have found (postgresql) that it will work better tuned much differently, e.g. I let it do an indefinite number of deletes at once rather than in small bites, and so far no down sides (your experience may be different of course). But you need to see that housekeeping is actually keeping up -- if it is falling behind, fix it soon or it will just get worse and worse.

[kloczek]

https://www.zabbix.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9925