When RSA Identity Governance & Lifecycle is initially installed, the deployed aveksa.ear file is saved in $AVEKSA_HOME/archive. Every time RSA Identity Governance & Lifecycle is patched or customized, the new aveksa.ear is saved in $AVEKSA_HOME/archive and the older aveksa.ear files are also retained. The more patch installations and/or customizations, the more aveksa.ear files that are archived and retained in this directory. Over time, the accumulation of these files requires more and more disk space for storage.
For example, the below directory listing was taken from a 7.1.1 system that had P01 installed and customized, and P03 installed and customized twice. That means six aveksa.ear files stored in $AVEKSA_HOME/archive each over a gigabyte in size.
-rw-r--r-- 1 oracle oinstall 552 Mar 18 2019 Archive_README.txt
-rw-rw---- 1 oracle oinstall 1012144645 Mar 18 2019 aveksa_7.1.1_161195-2019-Mar-18-13.31.ear
-rw-rw---- 1 oracle oinstall 1012654999 Mar 31 2019 aveksa_7.1.1_161195_P01-2019-Mar-31-13.31.ear
-rw-rw---- 1 oracle oinstall 1012723890 Apr 11 2019 aveksa_7.1.1_161195_P01-2019-Apr-11-13.31.ear
-rw-rw---- 1 oracle oinstall 1014234513 May 21 2019 aveksa_7.1.1_161195_P03-2019-May-21-13.31.ear
-rw-rw---- 1 oracle oinstall 1014236718 May 25 2019 aveksa_7.1.1_161195_P03-2019-May-25-13.31.ear
-rw-rw---- 1 oracle oinstall 1014239945 Aug 22 2019 aveksa_7.1.1_161195_P03-2019-Aug-22-13.31.ear
-rw-r--r-- 1 oracle oinstall 159 Mar 18 2019 DO_NOT_REMOVE_ARCHIVE_FILES.txt
-rw-rw---- 1 oracle oinstall 127 Mar 18 2019 wildfly_deployment.properties
The name of the file DO_NOT_REMOVE_ARCHIVE_FILES.txt indicates none of these files can be removed. The contents of this file also indicate these files should not be removed.
The archive files are important in redeploying current versions Please do not remove them.
In particular those indicated in the wildfly_deployment.properties
This RSA Knowledge Base Article explains which files may be safely removed from this directory.
The purpose of preserving each aveksa.ear file is to provide the ability to go back to a previous ear file if necessary. However, the RSA Identity Governance & Lifecycle application only requires the currently deployed ear file and the initial ear file (if different from the currently deployed ear file) to be kept.
To determine which aveksa*.ear files may safely be removed, check the contents of
$AVEKSA_HOME/archive/wildfly_deployment.properties. This files lists the currently deployed ear file and the intial ear file. For example,
CURRENTLY_DEPLOYED_ARCHIVE=aveksa_7.1.1_161195-2019-Mar-18-13.31.ear
INITIAL_ARCHIVE=aveksa_7.1.1_161195_P03-2019-Aug-22-13.31.ear
These two files mentioned in wildfly_deployment.properties should not be removed as it may impact patching and upgrading of the existing environment. Other older ear files listed in the archive directory may be removed if there are issues with space and there are no requirements to use those older versions in an environment sometime in the future.
