DOCUMENT:Q196229  06-AUG-2002  [sms]
TITLE   :SMS: How to Delete Inventory History Accumulated Over Time
PRODUCT :Microsoft Systems Management Server
PROD/VER:winnt:1.2
OPER/SYS:
KEYWORDS:kbDatabase kbsms120 kbsmsAdmin

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The information in this article applies to:

 - Microsoft Systems Management Server version 1.2 
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SUMMARY
=======

Over time, your SMS database may grow larger and larger because client inventory
history is retained. You may not want to keep all this history information, and
this article explains how to reduce the amount of information retained by
deleting history records that are older than a date you specify.

MORE INFORMATION
================

Before removing old unneeded history records from the SMS database, you should
check to see what the oldest history in the database is. To do this, you can
either check the date stamp of the SMS directory, or you can run the following
SQL statement:

   select min(timekey) from machinedatahistorytable

Then, after you know the appropriate date, you can perform the following steps:

1. Open the Systems Management Server Administrator program and then open the
   Sites window.

2. On the Edit menu, click Delete Special.

3. Select Machine History Records, and then specify your date criteria (for
   example, dated before <date> or older than <xxx> days). This way,
   you can either use a specific cut-off date to determine which records to
   delete, or specify that records that are older than a certain number of days
   are to be deleted.

   NOTE: It is a good idea to start by only deleting 20 to 100 days and then
   increase this number based on performance monitoring.

4. Run the Systems Management Server Database Manager (Dbclean.exe). To start
   Database Manager, on the Tools menu, click Delete Unused Common/Specific
   Records.

For more information, see the SMS Database Maintenance white paper, located at
the following Microsoft Web site:

   http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sms/

Additional query words: prodsms admin

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Keywords          : kbDatabase kbsms120 kbsmsAdmin 
Technology        : kbSMSSearch kbSMS120
Version           : winnt:1.2
Issue type        : kbinfo

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