How to manually clean up bamboo artifacts\globalStorage

[Camille Dominique]

Hi,

We are currently using bamboo 5.5.0 and running into disk space issues, mainly due to the artifacts\globalStorage folder.

As of my understanding, there is a setting to expire files in globalStorage, but only as of bamboo 5.7.0

Until we do update to a newer version, what is the Right Way (TM) to get rid of old deployments under globalStorage?

1. Can it be done in bulk through the Web-GUI (without clicking through every single deployment release?
2. If not, can I simply delete the oldest folders from the filesystem?
3. Will this impact the deployment plans or the database in any way?
4. Do I have to stop the Bamboo service before I delete stuff in globalStorage?

Thanks

[Marcin Gardias]

My recommendation would be to upgrade and use our supported method of artifact expiry, but since that might be difficult if you are tight on space already, here are the answers to your questions:

1. No, the expiry option we introduced in Bamboo 5.7 is the 'bulk' action you are looking for.
2. Yes with some caveats. You need to be sure none of those artifacts is something you might need later (and can't rebuild). But I guess I'm stating the obvious here.
   Secondly, the folders in globalStorage are created when build result that originally produced the artifact is removed*. So older file date doesn't translate automatically to older artifact (although there is a correlation)
3. You will not be able to deploy or download those artifacts (thank you Captain Obvious). The artifacts will still be listed in the DB and the UI, but I don't think you need to worry about it.
4. No. 

*) If you are interested, here's why: originally artifacts used to be always stored in appropriate Plan's folder. We wanted to keep that convention, but we needed to make deployments work even if the corresponding build result is removed. We also didn't want to duplicate artifacts without need. So here's how it works: as long as build result exists, deployment looks for artifacts in respective Plan's folder. When it is deleted, we move the artifacts we into "globalStorage" so that they are not lost.