C drive low on space PeerDistRepub taking half drive space (BranchCache?)

Question

_{Monday, October 26, 2015 8:53 PM | 1 vote}

Hello,

I have started to run very low on space on my c drive on my Azure VM which hosts SharePoint. I used space monger to identify the largest files and see more than half my space (~70G) is in c:\windows\ServiceProfiles\NetworkService\AppData\Local\PeerDistRepub\Store\0 .

See image attached. I ran PowerShell 'Get-WSSBranchCacheStatus' which returned 'NotConfigured'.

I ran cmd command: 'netsh branchcache show status all' which shows about half of my hard drive taken up by Local Cache - see second image.

I ran 'netsh branchcache flush' and that released the space.

I guess this is a feature turned on in the Azure VM image for 2012 R2 Data Center?

Q. Do I need it? Can I move it? Can I turn it off?  I am running a multi server SharePoint 2013 farm.

Below, is the visual representation of used space. You can see the files taking all my space are in orange and they are the cache files in the c:\windows\ServiceProfiles\NetworkService\AppData\Local\PeerDistRepub\Store\0 directory ...

Marcel

All replies (5)

_{Monday, November 16, 2015 5:03 PM ✅Answered | 2 votes}

I can confirm that after flushing the cache a couple of weeks ago, usage has not increased.

netsh branchcache show status all

netsh branchcache flush

It is currently using 22,444,808 of 127,000,000,000 bytes which is 0.017% or so. I suspect resizes of the Azure VMs caused this problem.

Marcel

_{Tuesday, October 27, 2015 1:01 PM}

Hi Marcel,

An operating system disk can be a maximum of 127 GB, and if you create an Azure VM from the provided Platform Images, they will always use that maximum 127GB size.
But beyond just the OS disk (C: drive), you can attach data disks. A small VM can have 2 x 1 TB data disks, all the way up to an ExtraLarge that can have 16 x 1 TB data disks.

See also the operating system disk section at Manage Disks and Images

Archive the old SharePoint log may make more free space on your machine if logs are stored in default log location.

Please browse to the LOGS directory (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\LOGS), check it's size:  Create a folder called SP-ULS Logs on the D:\ drive, then go to Central Administration | Diagnostic Logging and changed the path to the new folder.

Hope this helps.

Girish Prajwal

_{Tuesday, October 27, 2015 3:55 PM}

Hi Girish,

Thanks for responding. I have all my IIS and SharePoint logs on an E drive (data drive).  The vast majority of the space on my C drive is being taken by this unexpected cache.

You did not answer my question Q. Do I need it? Can I move it? Can I turn it off?.

Marcel

_{Tuesday, October 27, 2015 8:14 PM}

Hi Marcel,

I suggest you to turn off and check the performance. Let us know if that affects any of your services.

In the meanwhile, let me get suggestions from our experts.

Girish Prajwal

_{Thursday, October 29, 2015 7:59 PM}

Hi Girish,

Thank you for continuing to look into this. As you can see from the first and second image, the amount of space used by the cache was above 50%, not the expected 5% of the total disk size (127G). Right now, the 'Active Current Cache Size' is 17999141 bytes, which is 0.014% of the available space. I am monitoring it.

I resized this machine several times, from A5 to A6 and back (and to other sizes also) to try to improve performance which has been poor. I wonder if that is related? I also found this article which seems related: http://www.networksteve.com/forum/topic.php/Server_2012R2_BranchCache_Event_ID_13_&_service_memory_usage_pro/?TopicId=83482&Posts=2

Marcel