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Kace updates are killing our disk space

Since we have been using Kace for updates we have found that it is killing our disk space. There are several folders that are growing and support has no answers for us. 

The Windows/temp folder can grow to as much as 12GB after one patch schedule. This folder can be cleaned up easily enough since it is only temp files. The other folders that are more troublesome are the Windows/winsxs and windows/installer folders. These have grown to ridiculous sizes and cannot be cleaned up due to the fact Windows relies on these files when installing/upgrading/uninstalling new software. The folders are anywhere from 20-60GB! We have several machines where these folders are very small around 4-6GB that are not patched by Kace. My personal home computer is also fairly small at around 6GB. 

The problem appears to be Kace and we are out of answers. Searching for solutions everyone seems to have problems with these folders but not to this extent, Some solutions seem to be run freeware apps like ccCleaner or patchcleaner, move the folders to another drive and create a junction point to them, or compress the folders. We are not going to use a freeware product on our production servers/workstations. Moving the folder to another job does not solve the problem but causes additional problems and compressing only gives us 20-25% of that space back and again it still continues to grow. 

Is anyone having similar issues? Does anyone know why Kace would be causing this? We use to patch with WSUS and never had any of these issues. We are thinking about going back to WSUS and have already started testing. We bought Kace primarily for patching but it will lose value if we stop using it for that. 

6 Comments   [ + ] Show comments
  • What version of the K1 are you using? - Hobbsy 7 years ago
  • See this KB article:

    https://support.quest.com/kace-systems-management-appliance/kb/205660 - Channeler 7 years ago
  • We are on version 7.2.101. Again that article talks about the windows/temp folder which we already have a disk cleanup script that does that. It's the Windows/winsxs and windows/installer folders that are really the problem because they cannot be deleted safely without causing other issues down the line. - VCITNINJA 7 years ago
  • Interesting, unfortunately I haven't seen that behavior, I do not think the Kace agent is supposed to run a process after patching to delete items from those locations...

    In google I found this:
    https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/askpfeplat/2013/10/08/breaking-news-reduce-the-size-of-the-winsxs-directory-and-free-up-disk-space-with-a-new-update-for-windows-7-sp1-clients/

    And this:
    http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-check-size-and-reclaim-disk-space-winsxs-windows-81.htm

    And this:
    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2795190/how-to-address-disk-space-issues-that-are-caused-by-a-large-windows-co

    It does not seem they're all using KACE for patching

    Do you know if this is happening for both Win10 and Win7 devices? - Channeler 7 years ago
  • Yes it is happening for Windows 10 and Windows 7 but the Windows 7/2008R2 devices seem to have issues with the Windows/winsxs folder and Windows 10/21012R2 seem to have issues with the Windows/installer folder.

    We've tried all of those before and the cleanup is very minimal. - VCITNINJA 7 years ago
  • After reading this article I looked at these folders on both Windows 7 and Windows 10 machines and I don't see this behavior. There are files in these folders but it is not in the gig size like you are explaining. I do aggressive patching on a daily basis especially with our laptop that sometimes can be off campus for long periods of time. - scarpent 7 years ago

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