Some content databases are growing too large!

Many of us has surely came across this exception but today while monitoring the health analyzer, this error has caught my attention-

Some content databases are growing too large

Explanation:

The following content databases have grown larger than 100 GB.  Large content databases can be difficult to backup and restore.  They are also more likely to cause application hangs when operations that affect entire databases are performed.

Remedy:

Prevent new sites from being added to these databases by clicking the repair button or by going to http://CentralAdministrationURL/_admin/cntdbadm.aspx .  Then, move some site collections to smaller databases. For more information about this rule, see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=142693.

Microsoft has already published an article on this with proper recommendations: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh685079%28v=office.15%29.aspx

I would like to know your views on this error message?

Note: If you find a different solution, please report it as a comment to this post. Be sure to double-verify it: undo your solution and verify that the problem comes back, then redo it and verify that the problem goes away.

My Suggestions:

1.   Before doing anything, I would suggest you to login to your SQL Server & check the exact file size of your web application’s content database and the logs files associated with it. Especially the log file!

2.   If your database is within the recommended size then you can safely ignore this alert.

3.   If log file size is the problem then you can definitely shrink it but I would suggest don’t shrink the content database too often as it’s not recommended.  

4.   If your database has already hit the 100GB size then I would suggest you to create a new database and move some site collections to new database and ensure the first database (for which you got the alert) should be within 100GB size.

5.   Additionally you have the option of “Repair Automatically” – which will run the timer job and remove this alert.

If you have any queries/questions regarding the above mentioned information then please let me know. I would be more than happy to help you as well as resolves your issues, Thank you.

Product applies to:-

1.   SharePoint Server 2010

2.   SharePoint Foundation 2010

References:-

Storage and SQL server capacity planning:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc298801.aspx

Merge content databases:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262923.aspx

Deploy by using DBA created databases:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262869.aspx