When I set this up I overlooked the retention period. My database has become pretty large so I want to decrease it's size. If I simply change the retention period (it was 365) it causes issues with SSIS running my packages. I even changed it in small increments but the deletion statement would create locks which would prevent new jobs from running.
Any ideas how to work around this? I've thought about just creating a new SSISDB.
Phil Brammer ran into this and a host of other things related to the care and feeding of the SSIS catalog, which he covers on his post Catalog Indexing Recommendations.
Root problem
The root problem is that MS attempted to design the SSIS with RI in mind but they were lazy and allowed the cascading deletes to happen versus explicitly handling them.
Out of the box, the new SSIS 2012 catalog database (SSISDB) has some basic indexing applied, with referential integrity set to do cascade deletes between most tables.
Enter the SQL Agent job, “SSIS Server Maintenance Job.” This job by default is set to run at midnight daily, and uses two catalog parameters to function: “Clean Logs Periodically” and “Retention Period (days).” When these are set, the maintenance job purges any data outside of the noted retention period.
This maintenance job deletes, 10 records at a time in a loop, from internal.operations and then cascades into many tables downstream. In our case, we have around 3000 operations records to delete daily (10 at a time!) that translates into 1.6 million rows from internal.operation_messages. That’s just one downstream table! This entire process completely, utterly locks up the SSISDB database from any SELECT/INSERT data
Resolution
Until MS changes up how things work, the supported option is
move the maintenance job schedule to a more appropriate time for your environment
I know at my current client, we only load data in the wee hours so the SSISDB is quiet during business hours.
If running the maintenance job during a quiet period isn't an option, then you're looking at crafting your own delete statements to try to get the cascading deletes to suck less.
At my current client, we've been running a about 200 packages nightly for the past 10 months and are also at 365 days of history. Our biggest tables, by an order of magnitude are.
Schema Table RowCount
internal event_message_context 1,869,028
internal operation_messages 1,500,811
internal event_messages 1,500,803
The driver of all of that data, internal.operations
only has 3300 rows in it, which aligns with Phil's comment about how exponentially this data grows.
So, identify the operation_id
to be purged and the delete from the leaf tables working back to the core, internal.operations
table.
USE SSISDB;
SET NOCOUNT ON;
IF object_id('tempdb..#DELETE_CANDIDATES') IS NOT NULL
BEGIN
DROP TABLE #DELETE_CANDIDATES;
END;
CREATE TABLE #DELETE_CANDIDATES
(
operation_id bigint NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY
);
DECLARE @DaysRetention int = 100;
INSERT INTO
#DELETE_CANDIDATES
(
operation_id
)
SELECT
IO.operation_id
FROM
internal.operations AS IO
WHERE
IO.start_time < DATEADD(day, -@DaysRetention, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP);
DELETE T
FROM
internal.event_message_context AS T
INNER JOIN
#DELETE_CANDIDATES AS DC
ON DC.operation_id = T.operation_id;
DELETE T
FROM
internal.event_messages AS T
INNER JOIN
#DELETE_CANDIDATES AS DC
ON DC.operation_id = T.operation_id;
DELETE T
FROM
internal.operation_messages AS T
INNER JOIN
#DELETE_CANDIDATES AS DC
ON DC.operation_id = T.operation_id;
-- etc
-- Finally, remove the entry from operations
DELETE T
FROM
internal.operations AS T
INNER JOIN
#DELETE_CANDIDATES AS DC
ON DC.operation_id = T.operation_id;
Usual caveats apply
- don't trust code from randoms on the internet
- use the diagrams from ssistalk and/or system tables to identify all the dependencies
- you might need to only segment your delete operations into smaller operations
- you might benefit by dropping RI for operations but be certain to re-enable them with the check option so they are trusted.
- consult your dba if operations last longer than 4 hours
References
- Catalog Indexing Recommendations
- Beware the SSIS Server Maintenance Job
- Slow performance when you run the SSIS Server Maintenance Job to remove old data in SQL Server 2012
I created a similar stored procedure to do the archiving which is below. Let me know if any bugs. I provide no guarantees, but it works fine for me. This code is by no means polished but i wanted to share (i.e. the use of the temp table means can only run once at a time, maybe a session scoped table would be better)
I had a problem where by MS own clean procedure would blow ouut the LDF file and lock the tables for long periods, and once caused the server to run out of space. I decided to write my own to delete the larger tables first and then delete the operation table. This procedure below never uses more than a 1GB in log space, and does not lock the tables for very long periods which is a catch 22 when SSIS jobs must run all day.
First it logs to a table
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[ETL_SSIS_Operations_Archived](
[id] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL,
[operation_id_str] [varchar](900) NOT NULL,
[event_messages_context] [int] NULL,
[event_messages] [int] NULL,
[operation_messages] [int] NULL,
[num_operators] [int] NULL,
[chunksize] [int] NULL,
[DateStarted] [datetime] NOT NULL,
[DateFinished] [datetime] NULL,
[executionSecs] [int] NULL,
[DelOperationsDateStarted] [datetime] NULL,
[DelOperationsDateFinished] [datetime] NULL,
[DelOperationsExecutionSecs] [int] NULL
) ON [PRIMARY]
GO
and uses a temp table
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[tmp_etl_operations_id](
[operation_id] [int] NULL,
[dateCreated] [datetime] NULL default getdate()
) ON [PRIMARY]
GO
ALTER TABLE [dbo].[tmp_etl_operations_id] ADD DEFAULT (getdate()) FOR [dateCreated]
GO
here is the procedure
CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[sp_Archive_SSIDB_Catalogue]
AS
BEGIN
DECLARE @MyCursor as CURSOR;
DECLARE @l_operation_id int;
declare @l_rows_del int = 1
declare @l_operation_id_str varchar(8000) = ''
declare @l_id int
declare @l_event_message_context int = 0
declare @l_event_messages int = 0
declare @l_operation_messages int = 0
declare @l_loop_num int = 1
declare @C_BULK_NUM int = 100
declare @C_CHUNK_SIZE int = 100000
declare @l_last_rec char(1)
SET @MyCursor = CURSOR FOR
with params as
(
-- i round up the midnight that day, just so i know once it is done for the day it is done
-- and if the real maintenance job was to run after this (just for the sake of it to double ensure nothing has been missed), but not actually need to do
-- anything as its already done in here, no new operations would have snuck in due to the sliding system time
SELECT cast(dateadd(day,1,GETDATE() - CONVERT(int,property_value)) as date) ArchiveDate
FROM ssisdb.[catalog].[catalog_properties]
WHERE property_name = 'RETENTION_WINDOW'
)
select operation_id,iif(r=c,'Y','N') lastrec
from
(
select operation_id,row_number() over (partition by null order by operation_id) r,count(*) over (partition by null) c
FROM ssisdb.[internal].[operations]
WHERE ( [end_time] <= (select ArchiveDate from params)
-- A special case when END_TIME is null, we will delete the records based on the created time
OR ([end_time] IS NULL AND [status] = 1 AND [created_time] <= (select ArchiveDate from params) ))
) x
order by operation_id
OPEN @MyCursor;
FETCH NEXT FROM @MyCursor INTO @l_operation_id,@l_last_rec
WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN
set @l_operation_id_str = @l_operation_id_str+','+cast(@l_operation_id as varchar(100))
if @l_loop_num = 1
begin
delete from tmp_etl_operations_id
set @l_operation_id_str = cast(@l_operation_id as varchar(100))
end
insert into tmp_etl_operations_id (operation_id) select @l_operation_id
if @l_loop_num = @C_BULK_NUM or @l_last_rec='Y'
begin
set @l_loop_num = 1
set @l_event_message_context = 0
set @l_event_messages = 0
set @l_operation_messages = 0
insert into ETL_SSIS_Operations_Archived ([operation_id_str], num_operators,chunksize, event_messages_context, event_messages, operation_messages, datestarted)
select @l_operation_id_str, @C_BULK_NUM,@C_CHUNK_SIZE,@l_event_message_context,@l_event_messages,@l_operation_messages,getdate()
--where 0 = (select count(*) from ETL_SSIS_Operations_Archived where operation_id=@l_operation_id_str)
set @l_id = Scope_Identity()
set @l_rows_del = @C_CHUNK_SIZE
while (@l_rows_del >= @C_CHUNK_SIZE)
begin
delete top (@C_CHUNK_SIZE)
from ssisdb.internal.event_message_context
where operation_id in (select operation_id from etl..tmp_etl_operations_id)
set @l_rows_del = @@ROWCOUNT
set @l_event_message_context = @l_event_message_context+@l_rows_del
update ETL_SSIS_Operations_Archived
set event_messages_context = event_messages_context+@l_rows_del
where id = @l_id--operation_id = @l_operation_id_str
end
set @l_rows_del = @C_CHUNK_SIZE
while (@l_rows_del >= @C_CHUNK_SIZE)
begin
delete top (@C_CHUNK_SIZE)
from ssisdb.internal.event_messages
where operation_id in (select operation_id from tmp_etl_operations_id)
set @l_rows_del = @@ROWCOUNT
set @l_event_messages = @l_event_messages+@l_rows_del
update ETL_SSIS_Operations_Archived
set event_messages = event_messages+@l_rows_del
where id = @l_id--operation_id = @l_operation_id_strwhere operation_id = @l_operation_id_str
end
set @l_rows_del = @C_CHUNK_SIZE
while (@l_rows_del >= @C_CHUNK_SIZE)
begin
delete top (@C_CHUNK_SIZE)
from ssisdb.internal.operation_messages
where operation_id in (select operation_id from tmp_etl_operations_id)
set @l_rows_del = @@ROWCOUNT
set @l_operation_messages = @l_operation_messages+@l_rows_del
update ETL_SSIS_Operations_Archived
set operation_messages = operation_messages+@l_rows_del
where id = @l_id--operation_id = @l_operation_id_strwhere operation_id = @l_operation_id_str --
end
update ETL_SSIS_Operations_Archived
set DateFinished = getdate()
,executionSecs = Datediff(s, DateStarted, getdate())
,DelOperationsDateStarted = getdate()
where id = @l_id--operation_id = @l_operation_id_strwhere operation_id = @l_operation_id_str --
-- lets delete the operations now
delete --top (@C_CHUNK_SIZE)
from ssisdb.internal.operations
where operation_id in (select operation_id from tmp_etl_operations_id)
update ETL_SSIS_Operations_Archived
set DelOperationsDateFinished = getdate()
,DelOperationsExecutionSecs = Datediff(s, DelOperationsDateStarted, getdate())
where id = @l_id--operation_id = @l_operation_id_strwhere operation_id = @l_operation_id_str --
end
else
begin
set @l_loop_num = @l_loop_num+1
end
FETCH NEXT FROM @MyCursor INTO @l_operation_id,@l_last_rec
END
CLOSE @MyCursor;
DEALLOCATE @MyCursor;
END