How big is big

[ardyhash]

Hello world,

I've been maintaining a FusionPBX install and each time the hardware/cloud provider changed I'd just move over the database. Usage has traditionally been low but over the past year or two I've seen a steady growth to the point where if I don't move the day's recordings off local storage overnight the next day I risk running critically low on disk space. I don't even keep more than the previous day's backup on disk anymore as the tarball is well over a gigabyte. So am I freaking out about the size of the database for no reason or is there some sort of maintenance I should be doing to trim the database? While on the subject, has anyone split db duties out to be accessed over the network instead? I read someone here say once that storage is cheap so is everyone just throwing storage at their installations as they grow?

 

[Adrian Fretwell]

I run a job every night to convert wav to mp3, that in itself saves a lot of space.
I delete recordings and voicmails over 30 days old, I do have domain exceptions for customers who need them for longer.
Any customers that want us to keep recordings for more than a year, we ship them off to a sftp server.
You can reduce the size of your xmlcdr table by removing the json and/or xml content.
We used to delete fax logs, but no one uses fax over here anymore.

Generally speaking, I try to keep the PBX footprint small and ship big stuff like recordings off to storage servers.

 

[ardyhash]

Thanks Adrian, the fact that you you didn’t bat an eye at the backup size has me feeling better, though I forgot to mention the backup now is just the database dump as I have a job move recordings off the host before the backup starts.
Thanks for the tip about xmlcdr table (at least older) CDR records can afford to be trimmed as I don’t see myself troubleshooting a call that’s more than a few days old.
I’ve been shipping recordings off to S3… but I think I like your sftp solution more (I’m using s3fs and updating the db to point to the s3fs mounted volume to make them available in Fusion but feel the overhead of using sftp will likely be less and it could reduce unnecessary complexity and pain points). I appreciate your input and feel you should know that your answers (historical to other people’s questions, as well as those directly to myself) have been a huge help in my journey. I went from fostering a friend’s installation to onboarding a stranger and would never have taken on the stranger if not for the confidence that you and the others like you are active community members, I must learn from your example and be a better member.