VAMI's pre-update check often refuses a patch or upgrade with a warning that /storage/archive is low on space. The partition holds archived PostgreSQL WAL history, and VCSA's archiver fills it close to the cap on purpose — so the warning is normal and genuinely blocking. Prune older archives, re-run the precheck, ship it. Applies to VCSA 6.7 / 7.0 / 8.0.

Before you touch anything

  1. Take a file-based VCSA backup via VAMI — supported recovery path if anything goes sideways.
  2. Optional but cheap: snapshot the VCSA VM. Drop the snapshot once the upgrade is stable; never keep one across a later disk expansion.

Prune the archive

SSH into the appliance as root and confirm the culprit:

du -sh /storage/archive/* 2>/dev/null
df -h /storage/archive

You'll almost always see /storage/archive/vpostgres consuming the bulk of the partition. Delete archives older than a retention window — 40 days is a safe default, narrow it only if you need more headroom:

# Preview first
find /storage/archive/vpostgres -type f -mtime +40 | head

# Delete
find /storage/archive/vpostgres -type f -mtime +40 -delete

Confirm headroom came back:

df -h /storage/archive

A healthy result looks roughly like:

Filesystem                       Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/archive_vg-archive    49G  3.5G   43G   8% /storage/archive

Finish up

Re-run the VAMI Pre-Update Check — the /storage/archive warning should clear and the patch/upgrade can proceed. Once it's verified stable, drop the safety snapshot.

Worth knowing

  • The partition refills as WAL accumulates. This is recurring maintenance, not a one-time fix — fold it into your pre-patch checklist.
  • "Near full" on /storage/archive is by design; restoring headroom is what makes the precheck happy, not what fixes an underlying problem.
  • Make sure the retention window you choose still meets whatever your environment expects for point-in-time recovery before you delete.

References