Managing System Data
SMEs: New chapter to club all the system data collection, retention and cleanup topics in one place. Eventually will include how to setup and use Distributed Data Collectors, when that feature makes it into the product.
One of the roles of an administrator is to manage Prime Infrastructure's network data collection and retention so that it:
•
Scales to fit the real needsa of the system's users.
•Minimizes the burden on monitoried devices, applications, and network bandwidth.
•Survivies hardware failures .
The following sections explain how to achieve these goals.
Scaling the System
SMEs: New planning section explaining the options administrator has in how data collection is done, controlling the size of the database, how much additional traffic the system generates, the size of log files, etc.
SMEs: Questions for you:
Is there any way the customer can check on how big his critical data stores are getting? The information under Administration > Appliance > Disk Space just gives Disk Space usage. How does he connect to that to, say, how long he is retaining Alarm and Event data, or
Do we have any stats on how big these get given sizes of networks, OVAs?
How do they track the size of these databases and log files?
What are the tradeoffs in terms of amount of database and log file and audit data detail you can retain? For example how do the retention periods for Trend, Device Health, Performance, Network Audit and System Health data affect the growth of the database?
Recommendations on where you should cut first, depending on what your emphasese are. For example, if performance data is critical, leave performance alone, cut trend data.
List built-in controls, like Alarm/Event cleanup, and link to all the procedures associated with this.
Related Topics
•Controlling Background Data Collection Tasks
•Checking on System Disk Usage
•Controlling Report Storage and Cleanup
•Controlling Alarm, Event, and Syslog Retention
•Controlling Health Data Retention
•Controlling Trend Data Retention
•Controlling Performance Data Retention
•Controlling Audit Data Retention
Controlling Background Data Collection Tasks
Checking on System Disk Usage
To check on the current disk usage:
Step 1 Choose Administration > Appliance > Appliance Status.
Step 2 Under Disk Usage, Prime Infrastructure displays the current storage allocation and percantage of use for each of the Prime Infrastructure subsystem:s in Appliance Status Data Sources.
Controlling Report Storage and Cleanup
All scheduled reports are stored in the Scheduled Reports Repository. You will want to ensure that scheduled reports are retained in the report repository for reasonable lengths of time only, and deleted on a regular basis.
The default retention scheme is to retain generated reports for no more than 31 days. You can customize this retention period following the steps below.
Step 1 Select Administration > System Settings.
Step 2 Select Report
Step 3 In Repository Path, change specify the repository path as needed. )
Step 4 Under File Retain Period, change the schedule report retention period as needed
Step 5 Click Save.
Related Topics
•Controlling Alarm, Event, and Syslog Retention, page 16-1
Controlling Alarm, Event, and Syslog Retention
As part of managing your system data, you will want to ensure that raw alarm, event and syslog data are retained for reasonable lengths of time only, and deleted on a regular basis.
Data cleanup tasks run nightly to delete old alarms. In addition to the data cleanup task, Prime Infrastructure has an hourly task to check alarm table size. When the alarm table size exceeds 300K, the task deletes the oldest cleared alarms until the alarm table size is within 300 K..
The default retention scheme is to retain active alarms, cleared security alarms, events, and syslogs for no more than 30 days. Cleared non-security alarms are retained for 7 days only.
You can customize these retention periods following the steps below.
Step 1 Select Administration > System Settings.
Step 2 Select Alarms and Events
Step 3 Under Alarm and Event Cleanup Options, change the alarm and event retention periods, as needed.
Step 4 Under Syslog Cleanup Options, change the syslog retention period as needed
Step 5 Click Save.
Related Topics
Controlling Health Data Retention
Device Health and System Health data are assembled constantly, and deleted on an hourly, daily and weekly basis. SMEs: Why would someone want to change these? What does it mean that data are deelted on an hourly basis? What is retained after that to be deleted on the daily and weekly basis?
You can customize these retention periods following the steps below.
Step 1 Select Administration > System Settings.
Step 2 Select Data Retention.
Step 3 Under Device Health Data Retain Periods, change the hourly, daily and weekly retention period, as needed.
Step 4 Under System Health Data Retain Periods, change the hourly, daily and weekly retention period, as needed.
Step 5 Click Save.
Related Topics
Controlling Trend Data Retention
Trend data is aggregated constantly, and deleted on an hourly, daily and weekly basis. SMEs: Why would someone want to change this? What does it mean that the data are "aggregated"? How is this different from the other data being retained?
You can customize the retention period following the steps below.
Step 1 Select Administration > System Settings.
Step 2 Select Data Retention.
Step 3 Under Trend Data Retain Periods, change the hourly, daily and weekly aggregated data retention period, as needed.
Step 4 Click Save.
Related Topics
Controlling Performance Data Retention
Performance data is ssembled constantly, and deleted on a flexible short-, medium- and long-term basis . SMEs: Why would someone want to change this? What kind of data is deleted on the short-term basis? What on long-term?
You can customize these retention periods following the steps below.
Step 1 Select Administration > System Settings.
Step 2 Select Data Retention.
Step 3 Under Performance Data Retain Periods, change the short, medium and long-term data retention period, as needed.
Step 4 Click Save.
Related Topics
Controlling Audit Data Retention
Network audit data is normally deleted after 90 days. . SMEs: Why would someone want to change this?
You can customize this retention period following the steps below.
Step 1 Select Administration > System Settings.
Step 2 Select Data Retention.
Step 3 Under Network Audit Data Retain Period, change the retention period, as needed.
Step 4 Click Save.
Related Topics
Maintaining the Database
As with any other system upon which your organization relies, you will need to ensure that Prime Infrastructure's databases are backed up regularly and can be restored in case of hardware or other failures.
Backups are always stored in a depository. You may specify remote FTP repositories as well as the default local repositories. Backups are aaved as .zip files in the ftp-install-dir/ftp-server/root/NCSBackup directory, with a filename in this format: dd-mmm-yy_ hh-mm-ss.zip (for example, 10-Dec-12_10-15-22.zip).
Related Topics
•Running Database Backups On Demand
•Scheduling Automatic Database Backups
•Restoring the Database From Backups
Running Database Backups On Demand
You will normally want to schedule automatic database backups, so that the time- and processor-intensive backup process occurs only at relatively low-traffice periods during the day.
If you want to execute an immediate system backup, follow the steps below.
Step 1 Choose Administration > Task Manager > Background Tasks.
Step 2 Under Other Background Tasks, find the NCS Server Backup task.
Step 3 If you want to change the backup repository and maximum number of backups, click the NCS Server Backup link and adjust these values, then click Save.
Step 4 Check the NCS Server Backup task checkbox.
Step 5 At the top of the page, select the command Execute Now.
Step 6 Click Go.
Step 7 Click Refresh to see the current status of the task.
Scheduling Automatic Database Backups
T.his section provides instructions for backing up the Prime Infrastructuredatabase. You can schedule regular backups through the user interface.
Most machine-specifie settings are not included in the database backup. If you restore the backup to a different device, you will need to manually re-create these settings. Machine-specific settings include FTP enable and disable, the FTP port, the FTP root directory, TFTP enable and disable, the TFTP port, the TFTP root directory, HTTP forward enable and disable, the HTTP port, the HTTPS port, the report repository directory, and all high availability settings.
To schedule automatic backups of the Prime Infrastructure database, follow these steps:
Step 1 Choose Administration > Task Manager > Background Tasks.
Step 2 Under Other Background Tasks, click NCS Server Backup.
Step 3 Complete the fields as follows:
a. Make sure Enabled is checked
b. Enter the maximum number of backups to keep (the default is 2).
c. Specify an existing backup repository (local or remote) or click Create to create a new repository.
d. Enter the number of days between each backup. For example, 1 = a daily backup, 2 = a backup every other day, 7 = a weekly backup, and so on. The default is 7, the minimum is 1, the maximum is 360.
e. Enter the time when you want the backup to start. Use this format: hh:mm AM/PM (for example: 03:00 AM).
Note Note Backing up a large database affects the performance of the server. You should schedule backups to run when the server is less active (for example, in the middle of the night).
Step 4 Click Save . The backup file will be saved as a .zip file in the ftp-install-dir/ftp-server/root/NCSBackup directory, with a filename in this format: dd-mmm-yy_ hh-mm-ss.zip (for example, 10-Dec-12_10-15-22.zip).
Restoring the Database From Backups
SME: New section. Customer needs to know how to do this, otherwise pulling backups is meaningless. Last time I spoke to anyone about it, they said it could be done both in the GUI and at the command line. I have no info on how to do either.
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