Delete old support bundles

How do I?
,
1

KOTS Admin Console stores application support bundles in two locations: metadata in Kubernetes Secrets and the bundle archives in object storage (such as MinIO). As your system accumulates support bundles over time, this can lead to:

  • Performance degradation
  • Potential out-of-memory (OOM) events
  • Disk space shortages

While the Admin Console UI provides a way to remove old support bundles, performance issues may make this approach impractical when there are too many bundles. This guide presents alternative command-line methods using kubectl to efficiently manage and remove support bundles.

delete support bundles from KOTS Admin Console UI
delete support bundles from KOTS Admin Console UI1914×1020 71.7 KB

:warning: Warning: The following operations manipulate internal KOTS data structures. These procedures may change without notice in future KOTS releases. Download any required support bundles before proceeding.

Prerequisites

  • kubectl access to your Kubernetes cluster
  • Proper permissions to execute commands in the KOTS namespace

Step 1 : Delete all support bundle metadata from Kubernetes Secrets

export NAMESPACE=<namespace>
kubectl get secrets -n $NAMESPACE --no-headers=true | grep "^supportbundle" | awk '{print $1}' | xargs kubectl delete secret

Step 2: Delete support bundle archives from KOTS object storage (when Minio is used)

# exec into minio pod
kubectl exec -it sts/kotsadm-minio -n <namespace> -- sh
mc alias set myminio http://localhost:9000 $MINIO_ACCESS_KEY $MINIO_SECRET_KEY

# list all support bundle archives
 mc ls --summarize --recursive myminio/kotsadm/supportbundles

e.g.
[2025-05-05 23:52:03 UTC] 1.4KiB STANDARD 2whlz1oeebtpazvjwbiyggp3sf0/redactions.gz
[2025-05-05 23:52:03 UTC] 131KiB STANDARD 2whlz1oeebtpazvjwbiyggp3sf0/supportbundle.tar.gz
[2025-05-05 23:52:03 UTC] 1.7KiB STANDARD 2whlz1oeebtpazvjwbiyggp3sf0/treeindex.gz
[2025-05-06 00:00:17 UTC] 1.5KiB STANDARD 2whmz3ghm3yq4izcwnqit7ijxlk/redactions.gz
[2025-05-06 00:00:17 UTC] 130KiB STANDARD 2whmz3ghm3yq4izcwnqit7ijxlk/supportbundle.tar.gz
[2025-05-06 00:00:17 UTC] 1.7KiB STANDARD 2whmz3ghm3yq4izcwnqit7ijxlk/treeindex.gz
[2025-05-06 00:01:32 UTC] 1.4KiB STANDARD 2whn8unuugrvj6kk1vs3qsmpwsu/redactions.gz
[2025-05-06 00:01:32 UTC] 130KiB STANDARD 2whn8unuugrvj6kk1vs3qsmpwsu/supportbundle.tar.gz
[2025-05-06 00:01:32 UTC] 1.7KiB STANDARD 2whn8unuugrvj6kk1vs3qsmpwsu/treeindex.gz
[2025-05-06 00:01:43 UTC] 1.5KiB STANDARD 2whn9xboeoukze2hdkegqkheppz/redactions.gz
[2025-05-06 00:01:43 UTC] 129KiB STANDARD 2whn9xboeoukze2hdkegqkheppz/supportbundle.tar.gz
[2025-05-06 00:01:43 UTC] 1.7KiB STANDARD 2whn9xboeoukze2hdkegqkheppz/treeindex.gz

Total Size: 533 KiB
Total Objects: 12

# delete all support bundle archives with dry-run
mc rm --recursive --force --dry-run myminio/kotsadm/supportbundles/

# delete all support bundle archives
mc rm --recursive --force myminio/kotsadm/supportbundles/

# delete support bundle archives by date filter
mc rm --recursive --force myminio/kotsadm/supportbundles/ --older-than 7d10h31s

Verifying Changes

After completing these steps, verify that:

  1. The KOTS Admin Console still functions properly
  2. Your application can still be managed normally
  3. Disk space has been reclaimed