Confirm No Clients Still Use the Old Distribution Center

As an initial step, administrators are encouraged to confirm that no client computers are still using the Distribution Center.  

• If the endpoints were configured to receive their updates from the default clu-prod or clu-test DC's, check the daily localhost_access_log files on the LUA server.  Confirm that there are no longer any clients accessing the LUA server and logging "GET /clu-prod/..." requests.
• If the endpoints were configured to receive their updates from a remote DC configured on an IIS server, check the IIS logs to confirm no requests for files are currently being logged.  Details can be found in the Connect Forum article Using IIS Logs to Check LiveUpdate Administrator 2.x Health 

Should any requests be seen, identify the computers making those requests and ensure that their LiveUpdate policy is updated to direct them toward the current DCs rather than the DCs which will be decommissioned and deleted. 

Once it has been confirmed that all clients are using the new DC's, two steps are required to completely remove the retired DC and recycle its space: delete the Distribution Center in the LUA 2.x GUI, and delete the distributed files.

Delete the Distribution Center in the LUA 2.x GUI

To delete a distribution center, complete the following steps.  

In our example illustrated below, the default clu-prod DC was initially used.  To conserve space on the LUA 2.x server, a "New Distribution Center" DC has been created on a remote Windows 2008 server, and distribution schedules have been created to make all downloaded materials available there.  All Windows and Linux clients in the organization were configured to use "New Distribution Center" instead of the default clu-prod.   Logs have confirmed that all clients are using the Distribution Center successfully and no client requests (perhaps from clients that had been offline when the new LU policy was deployed) are coming in to clu-prod.

1 On the Configure tab, in the Distribution Centers window, select the distribution center you want to delete, and then click Delete.

2 Click Confirm Delete to finish deleting the distribution center.

 Note that when a Distribution Center is deleted, any distribution tasks for those DCs are deleted automatically.

Delete the Distributed Files

After the Distribution Center is deleted in the LUA 2.x GUI, the folder containing the Distribution Center files must be manually deleted.

Note that the Distribution Center files or folders are not automatically deleted or purged off the computer.  Some environments use a shared network location that contains files in addition to what LUA has distributed.  If LUA deleted these directories entirely, it would also delete the non-LUA content.  Also, deleting the directories entirely may not be possible for LUA to accomplish on manually-created IIS shares, non-Windows shares, and so on.  It is left to network administrators to delete the unnecessary files manually. 

In our example above, the whole decommissioned clu-prod directory on the LUA server can safely be deleted by the administrator as it only contains old LUA content update files.

Applies To

Important note: Administrators should never manually delete a Distribution Center (or files from a Distribution Center) that is in use!  This can prevent clients from receiving updates that are necessary to their security and stability.  It will also place the LiveUpdate Administrator PostgreSQL database into an inconsistent state.

Administrators who have manually deleted materials from an active DC should read What to do if you have Manually Deleted Files from a LiveUpdate Administrator 2.x Distribution Center?