Why SharePoint 2013 Content Database grows up fast?

Today (2014.03.07) my DBA colleague got my attention about the fast growth of one of the content database in our SharePoint 2013 farm.

The content DB was normally at 04GB but after something, its size was doubled.

So I started the verification and the first thing that I did was looking for with table inside my Content DB was taking most of the space.

You Can check it from the SQL Server Management Studio. Login to SQL Server Management Studio -> Select your Content DB (Right Click) -> Reports- > Standard Reports -> Disk Usage by Top Tables.

Our report says that the “dbo.AuditData” are taking most of the space inside Content database of our site collection:

My conclusion: if you have enabled something like view auditing, a search crawl that crawls all the content could increase database size because the audit entries are stored inside the content DB. Workflow history events and User Profiles Sync are also stored in the content db and could be another possible explanation for the “mysterious growth”.

I have checked what our customer had set up for Audit in his site, and I have seen that he had selected everything. So if you want to reduce it, you must to decide what really is important for you audit.

More references:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc678868%28v=office.15%29.aspx

Session: Content database

Content database size estimation

Content database size varies significantly with the usage of the site. Growth factors include the number of documents, number of users, use of versioning, use of Recycle Bins, size of quotas, whether the audit trail is configured, and how many items are chosen for auditing.

If Power Pivot for SharePoint is being used, the Excel files stored in SharePoint Server grow larger, which increases the size of the content database. For more information, see Plan a PowerPivot Deployment in a SharePoint Farm.

For detailed recommendations about how to calculate the size of a content database, see Storage and SQL Server capacity planning and configuration (SharePoint Server 2013).