Bamboo unresponsive during initial expiration?

[Tim_Brigham]

We recently enabled the global expiration option on our in house Bamboo instance, 5.7.2. We had nearly 10,000 old builds that would have need to be removed across or 50 or so projects. This is on Server 2008r2, Java 1.7 r75. 

Since the expiration process began the web interface is horribly unresponsive - it take up to a minute or two in order to register a link / dropdown / etc being clicked. 

The server itself is 8 cores and 6 GB of RAM. We are using 25% of the RAM, under 20% of the CPU.

The SQL server (on another host) isn't showing any signs of stress.. 

Is there anything I can do to mitigate this behavior? 

[Daniel Wester]

How many files are in the artifact directory? Also is it local or on a networked drive?

[Tim_Brigham]

I don't have a good answer as to the artifact directory. It's strictly stored on a local drive.

[Daniel Wester]

I know that Bamboo deletes each file individually. You might still want to check the io on the disk in case it's getting hung up by something else. That said - the drop downs in the top area are all client side so it shouldn't be affected by server performance.