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Free up space in the Container Registry

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To free up space in the Container Registry, you can delete unused data. Garbage Collection is used to delete unused data in the registry. The service collects unused data that you can delete:

  • layers of images to which no manifesto refers;
  • images without tags, which appear after images update.

Layers of images

The container image is described in the manifest, which contains a description of the image layers.

Each layer contains changes to the image relative to the previous layer. The last layer combines all layers and is the current version of the image. More information about layers in the Image Format Specification article of the Open Container Initiative documentation on GitHub.

An example of describing layers in a manifest:

"layers": [
  {
    "mediaType": "application/vnd.docker.image.tar.gzip",
    "size": 48394,
    "digest": "sha256:b6bc5667d566e6c6"
  },
  {
    "mediaType": "application/vnd.docker.image.tar.gzip",
    "size": 17453,
    "digest": "sha256:1205abcd5b522e6b"
  },
  {
    "mediaType": "application/vnd.docker.image.tar.gzip",
    "size": 35279,
    "digest": "sha256:fa46023e1248d8676"
  }
]

A single layer can be used by multiple manifests. Garbage Collection collects layers that are not referenced by any manifest - such layers do not use images and can be safely deleted.

Delete unused data

For your information

During the data removal (registry cleanup) process, you can download images, but you cannot download new images - the layers of the downloaded image may be deleted and this will cause an error in the image.

  1. In the Control Panel, on the top menu, click Products and select Container Registry.
  2. Open the Registries tab.
  3. The registry page will show the amount of unused data in this registry. Click Clear.
  4. Optional: check the Images without tags checkbox to delete them additionally. By default, only unused image layers are deleted.
  5. Click Clear.