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smith_jones's avatar
smith_jones
Level 6
10 years ago
Solved

How to backup activity monitor logs?

Hi All,

I often get trapped in critical condition where I need to check activity monitor logs ( Detailed Status info.) but as we all know we cannot get back the deleted entries details from activity monitor. We can just find which job had run and what was the status of them, etc.from reports column but not the detailed info as we can see in the activity monitor by double clicking the job and seeing in the detail status section.

I have increased , KEEP_JOBS_HOURS value to keep logs in activity monitor for one week. But this is not sufficient as I am suffering. I also will not increase the value to slowdown the things ( as recommendation).

But there must be some way to backup the activity monitor logs so that we can have ease of checking them whenever required. There must be some scheduling for this backup. 

I know that I can take backup of the log folder where the activity monitor logs are saved so that I can temporarily restore them and check and then replace them with the original folder. Is it possible? Any disadvantage or loss?

Also is there anyway to include this directory in the hotcatalog backup?

Also please confirm me the directories where the activity monitor logs are saved so that I can take backup of them and restore them when required.

I need to backup the detail status info of the jobs in activity monitor. I feel many difficulties when someone by chance deletes them or they got deleted due to the value set in KEEP_JOBS_HOURS.

PLEASE.

7.5
Backup and Recovery
NetBackup
Windows Server (2003-2008)
  • Marianne's avatar
    Marianne
    10 years ago

    Jobs db is for some reason not included in Hot Catalog Backup and cannot be added to the Hot Catalog backup.

    Most of the info in Activity Monitor is also stored in the NBU 'error' database which is included in a Catalog Backup. Retentions of this db is linked to 'Days to keep logs' in Master's Global Attributes.

    Please run 'All Log Entries' report for a client for a specific day/period and see if all required info is there.
    If it is, we can possibly help to restore a set of files in error folder from a catalog backup. 
    The only issue with the contents of these files is that it is in 'unformatted' form.

    Why not deploy OpsCentre Analytics where you can store historical info?

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  • mph999's avatar
    mph999
    Level 6
    10 years ago

    Backup :

    /usr/openv/netbackup/db/jobs/trylogs

     

    or Windows

    <install>\veritas\netbackup\db\jobs\trylogs

  • Nicolai's avatar
    Nicolai
    Moderator
    10 years ago

    Install opscenter - it can retain the activity monitor logs for up to 6 month.

    And you have already access to it as part of the Netbackup product suite.

  • Marianne's avatar
    Marianne
    Level 6
    10 years ago

    Jobs db is for some reason not included in Hot Catalog Backup and cannot be added to the Hot Catalog backup.

    Most of the info in Activity Monitor is also stored in the NBU 'error' database which is included in a Catalog Backup. Retentions of this db is linked to 'Days to keep logs' in Master's Global Attributes.

    Please run 'All Log Entries' report for a client for a specific day/period and see if all required info is there.
    If it is, we can possibly help to restore a set of files in error folder from a catalog backup. 
    The only issue with the contents of these files is that it is in 'unformatted' form.

    Why not deploy OpsCentre Analytics where you can store historical info?

  • smith_jones's avatar
    smith_jones
    Level 6
    10 years ago

    ok. I will go and check to see if I can see the detail status of the jobs of activity monitor in OpsCentre of deleted jobs.

     

    For now please tell me if I will replace the original jobs directory in the netbackup\db\jobs with the old directory that I had backed up for testing, will I be able to get the jobs in the activity monitor of old days with all the same parameters and detail status as if they are present now?

    Is there any loss or disadvantage in that? I am just interested for the detail status info which activity monitor gives for each backup jobs.

  • sdo's avatar
    sdo
    Moderator
    10 years ago

    My method:

    1) Schedule a job/task to save a bpdbjobs -most_columns, and an -all_columns every day, to a date-stamped sub-folder.

    2) Process the files to remove everything not for the session window - (i.e. trim down the size of files - so that all records in all files are unique).  And, if on Windows, issue a 'compress' command on the folder.

    3) Write a script/tool to parse these files, so that you can select by any and all of the folowing: date/time from/to, name of day of week, policy, client, schedule, policy type, media server, (e.g. any of the activity monitor 'columns') etc... you could even add wildcard and/or regular expression pattern matching easily enough... and preferably add some code to autogenerate a nicely formatted Excel file for you - for immediate sharing with anyone who asks for a history report.

    Makes for a great reporting tool going back for many years - great for trend analysis.  As the 'history' grows - you'll become more motivated to script nicer reports to mine this historical data for useful info.  It becomes a very useful data-set.  A super motivator for learning a scripting language.

    .

    Or try to make OpsCenter do what you want it to do.

  • Marianne's avatar
    Marianne
    Level 6
    10 years ago

    I do NOT recommend restoring back to original destination.

    It will for one overwrite existing files such as pempersist and jobid.

  • sdo's avatar
    sdo
    Moderator
    10 years ago

    I agree.  Don't mess with NetBackup's own meta data files.  You'll only wish you handn't.

    If you haven't time to develop this yourself, I'm sure there must be sites where you can hire someone to craft something quickly for you.