SQL 2013 Filestream Filegroup Full, but have plenty of space?

Question

Getting errors constantly that the filegroup is full for the filestream table. Though there was plenty of space on the system (ram, disk, ...).

Also noticed cases where if you delete files from table, it does not delete the file from disk. Even if the system is idle for days it would not run on its own, though it is presumed to.

Answer 1

The answer through empirical evidence was to force garbage collection: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg492195.aspx

Created a SQL job to run every minute (is faster if ran more often, less to do) to force garbage collection. Once the garbage collector caught up, as it will stop after so much time (even if not fully completed) all went away.

This also released the delete entries from the disk.

Hope this helps someone, even Microsoft Support ticket opened did not figure this one out.

Answer 2

Filestream becomes an extension of the Database. SQL still sees it as a SQL DB, although some data is not stored in the actual SQL.mdf data file.

Make sure your database size is not limited: DB > Properties > Files. Check Autogrowth/Maxsize.

I'm not sure about the 2nd part of your question, deleting the rows should delete the files, but I'm no Filestream expert. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg471497.aspx