Log cleanup automation in PowerShell - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Log cleanup automation

📖 Scenario: You are managing a server that generates many log files daily. To save disk space, you want to automatically delete old log files that are no longer needed.

🎯 Goal: Create a PowerShell script that deletes log files older than a certain number of days from a specific folder.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a variable with a list of log files in a folder

Create a variable for the age limit in days

Use a loop to find and delete files older than the age limit

Print the names of deleted files

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Automating log cleanup helps keep servers running smoothly by freeing disk space and reducing manual work.

💼 Career

System administrators and DevOps engineers often write scripts like this to maintain healthy server environments.

1

Get the list of log files

Create a variable called logFiles that stores all files with the extension .log from the folder C:\Logs using Get-ChildItem.

PowerShell

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use Get-ChildItem with -Path and -Filter to get log files.

2

Set the age limit for deletion

Create a variable called daysLimit and set it to 30 to represent the number of days after which log files should be deleted.

PowerShell

$logFiles = Get-ChildItem -Path 'C:\Logs' -Filter '*.log'
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just assign the number 30 to daysLimit.

3

Delete old log files

Use a foreach loop with the variable file to go through logFiles. Inside the loop, check if file.LastWriteTime is older than (Get-Date).AddDays(-daysLimit). If yes, delete the file using Remove-Item.

PowerShell

$logFiles = Get-ChildItem -Path 'C:\Logs' -Filter '*.log'
$daysLimit = 30
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use foreach to loop. Use if to compare dates. Use Remove-Item to delete.

4

Print deleted file names

Modify the loop to print the name of each deleted file using Write-Output right after deleting it. Use $file.Name to get the file name.

PowerShell

$logFiles = Get-ChildItem -Path 'C:\Logs' -Filter '*.log'
$daysLimit = 30
foreach ($file in $logFiles) {
    if ($file.LastWriteTime -lt (Get-Date).AddDays(-$daysLimit)) {
        Remove-Item $file.FullName
        # Your code here
    }
}

Need a hint?

Use Write-Output to print the deleted file name inside the if block.