Spring Cleaning Your Dev Box
07 Jun 2013 Leave a comment
After some time your dev box ends up looking like a well-used tool shed complete with unused tools and cobwebs in the corners.
While it’s quick and easy to get rid of half the icons on your desktop and delete droves of temporary working files – I always end up returning to a few well used scripts to get my much needed disk space back as well as a cleaner and faster box.
Often the trigger is exhausted disk space.
These are the scripts I always end up using.
Delete old site collections
If you are making site definitions (or web templates) you’ll likely end up with tons of small test site collections over time. I often use scripts to create them named after the current time.
To clean that all up I use the PS script (run in the SharePoint Administrative Console):
get-spsite http://* -limit all |? { $_.Url -Match "http://.*/" -and $_.LastContentModifiedDate -gt [DateTime]::Today.AddMonths(-2)} | remove-spsite
In human terms: “Delete every site collection that is not a root site collection and that have not been modified within the last two months”. Phew.
Do NOT run this in production.
Set Simple SQL Recovery Mode
Next I ensure that all my local databases run in simple recovery mode, i.e. avoid huge transactions logs that need to truncated once in a while.
I nicked this script somewhere in google (likely here):
USE MASTER
declare
@isql varchar(2000),
@dbname varchar(64)
declare c1 cursor for select name from master..sysdatabases where name not in ('master','model','msdb','tempdb')
open c1
fetch next from c1 into @dbname
While @@fetch_status -1
begin
select @isql = 'ALTER DATABASE [@dbname] SET AUTO_CLOSE OFF'
select @isql = replace(@isql,'@dbname',@dbname)
print @isql
exec(@isql)
select @isql = 'ALTER DATABASE [@dbname] SET RECOVERY SIMPLE'
select @isql = replace(@isql,'@dbname',@dbname)
print @isql
exec(@isql)
select @isql='USE [@dbname] checkpoint'
select @isql = replace(@isql,'@dbname',@dbname)
print @isql
exec(@isql)
fetch next from c1 into @dbname
end
close c1
deallocate c1
Run it within the SQL Server Management Studio.
Note that it is likely that the script will report a few minor errors if some DBs are detached/offline. Never mind.
Shrink DBs
Finally save some much needed space by shrinking the DB files. After site collection deletions and recovery mode changes there are likely a lot of space to be freed within the DB files.
This script will try to shrink all the DB files (I think I got it from here):
DROP TABLE #CommandQueue
CREATE TABLE #CommandQueue
(
ID INT IDENTITY ( 1, 1 )
, SqlStatement VARCHAR(1000)
)
INSERT INTO #CommandQueue
(
SqlStatement
)
SELECT
'USE [' + A.name + '] DBCC SHRINKFILE (N''' + B.name + ''' , 1)'
FROM
sys.databases A
INNER JOIN sys.master_files B
ON A.database_id = B.database_id
WHERE
A.name NOT IN ( 'master', 'model', 'msdb', 'tempdb' )
DECLARE @id INT
select * from #CommandQueue
SELECT @id = MIN(ID)
FROM #CommandQueue
WHILE @id IS NOT NULL
BEGIN
DECLARE @sqlStatement VARCHAR(1000)
SELECT
@sqlStatement = SqlStatement
FROM
#CommandQueue
WHERE
ID = @id
PRINT 'Executing ''' + @sqlStatement + '''...'
EXEC (@sqlStatement)
DELETE FROM #CommandQueue
WHERE ID = @id
SELECT @id = MIN(ID)
FROM #CommandQueue
END
Again expect some errors, inspect and accept them 
Expand the Disk?
If the three steps above didn’t free enough space for you, the solution often is to just expand the VHDs on your virtual machines.
It’s a fairly easy process in both VMWare and HyperV it only requires you to turn off the VM, remove any snapshots, and expand the disk using the wizard for it. This will only expand the VHD; your partitions will not grow, so you need to do that next.
You can use the disk management tool for it – however I find it cumbersome. Especially if it is the system disk you’re expanding it is awkward. I prefer to use GPartED, which is a very nice linux partition editor. It is a downloadable iso that is a breeze to boot into and expand the partition whether it is the system or not.
One note: In a typical Linux way you are asked all sorts of questions at boot; just hit return at every one of them. Who cares about the keyboard layout for a GUI program with big buttons anyway?
It looks something like this:
(Note: Before using this program make sure that you close down the VM nicely from the guest)
Easy.
That’s it for the guests!
