How to delete .usage file automatically

Question

_{Friday, January 10, 2014 9:17 AM}

under C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\LOGS the *.usage file will be saved each 5min. And they stay there. They will be never deleted automatically. The retention of usage file will be set as 3 days. And store trace log files is also 3 days. I find the *.log will be deleted automatically if they are older than 3 days. But *.usage files stay there permanent. Which setting can I do to delete *.usage files that older than 3 days?

All replies (4)

_{Friday, January 10, 2014 4:43 PM ✅Answered}

We had a similar problem and eventually traced it back to the Application server administration service timer job which once disabled, allowed the usage logs to be imported and deleted on schedule.  We have not noticed any issues from having this timer job disabled.  Like hulu0808 we don't the updates 2774411 or 2682011 installed.

We did try extending the time interval between starts of the Admin timer job, but that didn't make any difference to us, our thoughts there were that it was trying to start before it had finished.

Patrick, could you post a summary of the blog post as well as the link to it; blogs and their posts have this habit of disappearing over time which means we could end up with an answered post with no answer, which is very frustrating, thanks.

_{Wednesday, January 15, 2014 12:12 PM ✅Answered}

Hi  hulu0808 ,

You can just limit the retention timeframe less than 3 for specific usage items : 

Set-SPUsageDefinition -Identity"Page Requests" -DaysRetained 3

Reference: Set-SPUsageDefinition

Quick tip for tuning SharePoint 2013 Usage and Health data retention

Best Regards,

Eric

Eric Tao
TechNet Community Support

_{Friday, January 10, 2014 9:25 AM | 1 vote}

See whether this helps http://blogs.c5insight.com/Home/tabid/40/entryid/401/SharePoint-Usage-Logs-Not-Being-Removed-Fixed.aspx

Regards, Patrick Yong Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help

_{Friday, January 10, 2014 10:57 AM}

thank you Patrick. This post is very helpful. But I have just check installed hotfix on my sharepoint server, the updates 2775511 or 2682011 have not been installed.

I have got follwing error:

The Execute method of job definition Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPTimerRecycleJobDefinition (ID d1f52c6b-721d-40ec-9fc2-c025078927b9) threw an exception. More information is included below.

The timer service was not recycled because the following jobs were still running: Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Usage Data Import

I try to delete the .usage file manually, but I get error "The action can't be completed because the file is open in SharePoint 2010 Timer". If I stop the SharePoint 2010 Timer service I can delete *.usage.

I don't know if December 2013 cumulative update is the solution for my issuse, because I don't have Update 2775511 and 2682011. And If I install the CU December 2013 how can I test if it works? Due to Microsoft' description the timer job Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Usage Data Processing Checks for expired usage data at the farm level and deletes the data. Expired usage data consists of records in the central usage data collection database that are older than 30 days. That means the data older than 30 days will be deleted from database or .usage files will be deleted from sharepoint server?