SiteScope Log Preferences and Database Logging

Effective system availability monitoring requires that monitoring data be recorded and stored for an appropriate interval of time. Depending on the size of the data center, network, the number of servers and applications being monitored and the frequency of monitoring, managing the accumulated data can become challenging task in it self. Data records are needed for reporting on availability and performance over time. Yet eventually data storage becomes a problem. SiteScope Log Preferences and Database Logging options allow you to control data accumulation and storage.

This section describes:

About SiteScope Logs and Data Logging Options
Setting SiteScope Log Preferences
Database Logging
Troubleshooting Database Connections

About SiteScope Logs and Data Logging Options

By default, SiteScope saves monitor results, alert data, error data, and other readings returned by monitors into log files. These data are stored as tab delimited text. SiteScope uses the log files to generate various management reports. For monitor data results, a new, date-coded log file is created for each 24-hour period of monitoring.

SiteScope can also send monitoring data to an external database application. You can use this to reduce the data storage capacity of the SiteScope server and also make the monitoring data available to other reporting tools.

Setting SiteScope Log Preferences

Use the Log Preferences form to limit how much log information SiteScope saves to the local file system. The amount of data can be limited to the number of days to maintain log files or to a maximum data log file size.

Note: In order to create a SiteScope management report the monitoring log information for the desired time period of the report must be available on the SiteScope server file system.

Enter the log preference options as indicated below and then click the Save Changes button located at the bottom of the form.

Daily Logs To Keep: Enter the number of days of monitoring data to keep. Once a day, SiteScope deletes any logs older than the specified number of days. By default this is set to 40 days, which saves enough data to create monthly reports.
Maximum Size of Logs: Enter the maximum size allowed for all monitoring logs. Once a day, SiteScope checks the total size of all monitoring logs and removes any old logs that are over the maximum size. By default, this setting is blank and not used as it can result in the loss of report data.

Database Logging

SiteScope can optionally log a copy of all the monitoring data into a database. Any database which supports the ODBC or JDBC standards can be used, including Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle.

Database Connection URL

To enable Database logging, enter a URL to a Database Connection. The easiest way to create a database connection is to use ODBC to create a named connection to a database. For example, first use the ODBC control panel to create a connection called SiteScopeLog. Then, enter jdbc:odbc:SiteScopeLog in this box as the connection URL.

Database Driver

Specify the database driver SiteSCope should use to connect to the database. The driver should be a JDBC driver. The default database driver is sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver. To have SiteScope use another driver the driver must also be installed in the <SiteScope install path>/SiteScope/java directory and the path and filename must be entered in this text box.

Database Username

Enter the username used to login to the database. If you are using Microsoft SQL server, you can leave this blank and choose NT Authentication when you setup the ODBC connection. With NT Authentication, SiteScope connects using the login account of the SiteScope service.

Database Password

Enter a password used to login to the database. If you are using Microsoft SQL server, you can leave this blank and choose NT Authentication when you create the ODBC connection. With NT Authentication, SiteScope connects using the login account of the SiteScope service.

Backup Database Connection URL

Optionally, you may enter a URL to a backup database. Use this option to provide failover of SiteScope database logging in the case that the primary database become unavailable.

Note: The same database table definition, database driver, user name and password are applied to both database connections.

After you save changes to the Database preferences, you need to stop and restart the SiteScope service to have the changes take effect.

Troubleshooting Database Connections

When Database logging is active and working correctly, you should see a table called SiteScopeLog in your database and a record added to the table every time a monitor runs. The data is sent to the database as a single table in a flat-file format. For additional details, see the section about Log Descriptions.

If a table called SiteScopeLog is not created or is empty, check the SiteScope <SiteScope install path>/SiteScope/logs/RunMonitor.log and <SiteScope install path>/SiteScope/logs/Error.log files for log messages starting with "jdbc" or "odbc". When Database logging is working correctly, you should see a set of messages in RunMonitor.log that looks like this:

     jdbc log, reconnect seconds=600
     jdbc log, loading, driver=sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver
     jdbc log, connecting, url=jdbc:odbc:SiteScopeLog,
     jdbc log, logged in
     jdbc log, checking log table
     jdbc log, created log table
     jdbc log, prepare insert, 19, INSERT INTO SiteScopeLog...
     jdbc log, connected

If these entries do not appear in the log file there is a problem with the database interface or configuration of the database connection. You should also carefully check the Database Connection URL you entered above. This parameter is case sensitive. It is also sensitive to leading or trailing white space which may be the reason the connection does not work properly. Check the spelling and letter case of the connection URL and be sure there are no leading or trailing spaces present in the text box.

You can also check the on-line Knowledge Base available via the Customer Support site for other information relating to database logging.