I am using Nexus 3 and the blob stores consume more and more disk space as artifacts get uploaded. Now I deleted a bunch of no longer needed artifacts from a release repository, but I did not see any decrease of the consumed disk space. I deleted them by hand using the UI as there is still no automated way for this.
Do I need to run any reorganization job or something like that after deletion of artifacts? Or how else do I reduce blob sizes?
As stated in documentation of NXRM3 content deleted from a blob store is not physically deleted from the storage device. Instead it is only internally marked for deletion. This implies your deleted files have been only marked for deletion and not actually deleted.
In order to free your disk space you have to run scheduled task Compact blob store. This task performs the actual deletion of the relevant files, and therefore frees up the space on the file system.
Another important factor is Nexus repository version you use. More precisely to which version did you migrate. There was a bug in NXRM3 with inaccurate blob store count and size displayed in the Nexus UI. This was fixed with version 3.2.1 but the fix does not fix pre-existing issues.