The fourth component of the infrastructure, log file removal, concerns the ongoing disk consumption of the database log files. Depending on the rate at which the application writes to the databases and the available disk space, the number of log files may increase quickly enough so that disk space will be a resource problem. For this reason, you will periodically want to remove log files in order to conserve disk space. This procedure is distinct from database and log file archival for catastrophic recovery, and you cannot remove the current log files simply because you have created a database snapshot or copied log files to archival media.
Log files may be removed at any time, as long as:
Additionally, when Replication Manager is running the log file is older than the most out of date active site in the replication group.
If you are preparing for catastrophic failure, you will want to copy the log files to archival media before you remove them as described in Database and log file archival.
If you are not preparing for catastrophic failure, any one of the following methods can be used to remove log files: