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Hosting Storage Nearly Full (9.7gb/10gb)

Hi

Since there is no cPanel in hosting, I was wondering how I can find out what the hell is taking up all the storage. My site is about 400mb, I am using snapshot and managed backup in snapshot (which has its own storage i believe, which is at <1gb). At the moment snapshot has 1 “snap” at 384mb. So what is taking up all the storage? Any help will be highly appreciate. Thanks.

Wed, 27 Mar 2019 9:23:58
  • Predrag Dubajic
    • Support

    Hi TurnerEPS,

    We are currently working on bringing more detailed info on used space, it will show how much is used by files, DB, show three largest files, etc.

    I have created an SSH account and checked your files, it looks like there are some Managed Backups still being stored on the server instead of being offloaded and that’s taking up most of your available space.

    Would you mind allowing support access so we can have a closer look at this and see why are the backups still there?

    To enable support access you can follow this guide here:

    https://wpmudev.com/docs/getting-started/getting-support/#chapter-5

    Best regards,

    Predrag

  • Predrag Dubajic
    • Support

    Hi TurnerEPS,

    P.S. I'm not very familiar with websites (other than creating wordpress sites) but can anyone here create an SSH account and view my files?

    SSH account is created from Account tab when you edit your site on Hosting tab here https://wpmudev.com/hub/hosting/

    So only you and our staff have access to that, and we will only create an account if it's needed to assist you with your question(s).

    Just saw thi`s under hosting, under update, there seems to be an update everyday since the beginning, and there is no option to delete. There are automate updates and nightly updates. I think this is the culprit?

    This is actually not the same thing, those are Hosting server side backups, while the backups on your site are from Snapshot Backups that are a different type of backups.

    Hosting backups are enabled by default and they are run from the server side, and they are actually incremental, meaning that only the first backup is full size and rest of them are only differences from that initial backup.

    Managed Backups are on the other side created on your site, each time it creates a full backup that is stored on your server first, and after that, it is sent to our storage servers.

    Once the upload is completed, the backup from the server is removed.

    Then there are regular Snapshots that are backups which can be set to upload to remote destinations and can only include database, and files like uploads, themes and plugins, while the rest of the WP files are not included (compared to Managed and Server backups).

    Now, back to the issue on hand and what's taking up the space.

    I see on your site that you have all three types of these backups enabled, but the regular Snapshots are set to keep 10 of the backups on your server directly.

    What this means is that you have 10 backups stored and those are taking up your space.

    If you access your files via FTP or SSH and navigate to wp-content/uploads/snapshots/ you will see those 10 backups stored there.

    Those backups are configured in your Snapshot > Snapshots panel:

    [attachments are only viewable by logged-in members]

    I would suggest keeping only Server backups and disable Managed Backups and regular Snapshots because they are pretty much redundant.

    If you do want to keep one more type of backup just to stay extra safe I would suggest disabling regular Snapshots and then have Managed Backups and Server side backups running.

    If you're unsure how to remove the old backups via FTP or SSH let us know and we can remove them for you.

    Hope that this makes sense and that I didn't confuse you further with all the information :slight_smile:

    Best regards,

    Predrag

  • TurnerEPS
    • WPMU DEV Initiate

    Hi Predrag Dubajic

    Thats great, thanks for the detailed explanation. Really appreciate it. I do have a couple of questions still. Even with 10 snapshots, that’s about 4GB. And a managed backup while its uploading adds 0.4GB more. Including the site itself, still does not even add up.

    Regardless, I have deleted all snapshots via sftp, deleted the scheduled snapshots. I checked the /root size of the site via sftp and it now shows 600mb. I did all this about 3 hours ago. The hosting panel still shows 10GB. Hoping this will update and show 600mb?

  • Predrag Dubajic
    • Support

    Hi TurnerEPS,

    Your 10 snapshots will indeed take up around 4GB and with your site included it would be somewhere around 4.5GB

    If you count in the server backup of all of that you will get double of that, which is already near 9GB, then there’s staging site, that doesn’t take up much but it will still count into the used space and with that it should add up to the space used.

    Usage space usually updates between 6 and 12 hours, and I can see your site is now down to 6GB of used space, so those plugin backups are gone from the site files, but they are still in server backups and once those server backups time out you will see your used space without any of the Snapshot backups.

    Best regards,

    Predrag

  • TurnerEPS
    • WPMU DEV Initiate

    Hi Predrag Dubajic

    Sorry to message here after I closed it. But I feel I need to update you.

    It had been 4 days since I deleted all the snapshot backups. I had snapshots uploading to google drive ONLY. I had 2 “managed backups” at 400mb each. FTP put my root server size at around 1200mb. The storage was still 6.6GB full after 4 days. So I deleted my staging site. INSTANTLY storage went from 6.6GB to 1.8GB. WOW. I think perhaps the staging site was also creating backups? or something. But yea, hopefully this will help someone else in the future as well. Dont just make a staging environment and leave it there.

  • Predrag Dubajic
    • Support

    Hi TurnerEPS,

    Snapshot local backups are a part of the site so if you had the settings enabled on staging site then it would create backups as well so that could have been also taking up your space.

    There will also be hosting backup stored for 15 days since you removed snapshot backups so after that you should see more space freed.

    Best regards,

    Predrag