Instance SSD is completely filled

On installation of the Virtual machine, we set a specific storage space for the LMS e.g. 20GB for the Persitent SSD. An good indication of the LMS being down is if the page - when accessing the LMS via browser - displays error establishing database connection. Note: This is just one of many errors that may arise as a result of a full maxed instance storage.

How do we tell if the storage has been maxed out?

Open the SSH client (putty) and log in to the instance. The very first displayed items after logging in are the instance statuses such as

Memory usage

Storage capacity by %

OS (Operating System) and its version

Number of System updates (optional and important) and restart recommendations

Take a look at the storage %. If the % is over 95 or is at 100% then that means the instance has been fully maxed out and may require adding additional storage space

To sort this out, we need to shutdown the instance and add storage capacity to attached disk:

Go to the instance

console⁠

on GCP (Google Cloud Platform) and switch to the Google account which hosts the Virtual machine.

On the top left, click the menu icon to pull out the menu items. Navigate to Compute Engine > VM Instances

Click on the VM that hosts the LMS (if there are multiple VMs)

On the top bar, look for a 3-dot button, which will show several menu items. Our focus is on the Stop menu item. Clicking this prompts us to stop the instance. Ensure the instance has stopped to proceed to the next steps

Next, navigate to Disks on the left hand menu.

Select the disk that’s attached to the instance. Then click edit

On this page, you will see the option to increase the storage space. If the size was 20GB, you can then change the number to 30GB, thus increasing the storage by 10GB.

Finally click save.

Go back to the instance and start the VM.

Give the instance about 10 min to ensure the changes have been effected.

If you still note that the LMS hasn’t yet come back online, type the following command on the terminal

sudo systemctl start apache2

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