only the logs are kept in activity monitor in sequence dates?

[smith_jones]

Hello,

I have set the "KEEP_LOGS_HOURS" value = 192 and "KEEP_LOGS_SUCCESSFUL_HOURS"  VALUE = 192.

Means in activity monitor I can see logs of upto 8 days old (say 01-April-2015 to 08-April-2015).
 

My query is that if I delete the logs of one day say 05-April-2015 from activity monitor then do the logs of 01-April-2015 (oldest) will still be there in activity monitor next day i.e. 09-April-2015 and logs of date 09-April-2015 will be added in activity monitor?

Or only the logs are kept in activity monitor in sequence dates?

One more thing as I deleted the logs of 05-April-2015 from activity monitor then will it also be deleted from the directory "veritas--->netbackup--->db--->jobs" or "error" directory?  Will I be able to restore it from my previous catalog backup which was taken before deleting logs of 05-April-2015 from activity monitor?

Thanks.

[RamNagalla]

for 1st one

it will not keep the 1st April jobs in next day... 9th april, you will only have logs/jobs from 2nd april to 9th april ( expect 5th april since you have deleted it)

for 2nd one..

i would not recomment to remove any of those files manually even though they can be recovered.

[smith_jones]

So you mean that -

On 9th-April-2015, the jobs in activity monitor will be of -

02, 03, 04, 06, 07, 08, 09-April-2015.
 

This is only 168 hours (7 days). Then you mean that it checks from its logs that which was the oldest one ( 01-April-2015) and will delete it for sure no matter of how many days jobs are being shown in activity monitor.

Means if I delete the jobs of dates 04,07-April-2015 also along with 05-April-2015 on 08-April-2015, on 09-April-2015 the jobs in activity monitor will be of 02, 03, 06, 08 & 09 April-2015. The jobs of date 01-April-2015 will be deleted for sure on 09-April-2015.

Then following this, on 10-April-2015 the jobs of date 02-April-2015 will be deleted from activity monitor for sure knowing that there will only be logs of 5 days left in activity monitor (though I have set it for 8 days).

Am I right?

If Yes, then what if I want to keep logs of date say 03-April-2015 for a month or two in activity monitor because it will be deleted on 11-April-2015.  Is there any way without increasing KEEP_JOBS_HOURS value?

[RamNagalla · Accepted solution]

Remember.... you have not set it to 8 days..

you did the setting to keep the jobs in the activity moniror for 192 hours from the time it triggered..that stats with the job start time.. ( excluding job clean up intervals)

Does not matter what you have deleted manually in middle..

it only counts 192 hours from job start time... 

and there is no way without increaseing KEEP_JOBS_HOURS  to keep the jobs for month or 2

if you want to have the record of the jobs.with out increasing the KEEP_JOBS_HOURS  . go with Opscenter , freevesrion of Opscenter can keep info upto 60 days.

Opscenter has 2 version, Opscenter and OpsCenter Analytics.

Opsenter is free version which can be downloaded from Fileconnect. and it holds the history of 60 days.

if you would like to keep the history for more than 60 days you need to go  for OpsCenter Analytics which will give you the access to custome reports, SQL query and long term history retenction

[Marianne]

The information kept in jobs database is all about XXX hours ago. Anything older than 192 hours is automatically deleted from jobs database. Jobs and errors database are independent. Deleting jobs in Activity Monitor only deletes from jobs db, not error db.

[smith_jones]

Ok.

If before deleting the jobs of 05-April-2015 from activity monitor I have taken a catalog backup then will I be able to restore it from the catalog backup (i.e. the deleted logs of 05-April-2015).

[Marianne]

I have no idea why anyone would want to delete jobs in Activity Monitor and then restore from catalog backup... 

I have never tried it and not even sure if jobs db is backed up by catalog backup...

If you look at the files and folders under ..db\jobs, you will see that there is no single log/file per day, but multiple files for each job id in different sub folders.

[Marianne]

I have just checked BAR GUI (NBU-Catalog policy type) on our in-house lab server.

jobs database is not backed up as part of Catalog backup.

See attached screenshot.

[sdo]

Hi Smith_Jones - sounds to me like you could also consider saving the output from bpdbjobs -all_columns, on a frequency of a few hours less than your jobs retention - this way you could capture a long term record of 'jobs'. However, to do anything useful with this data would require some reasonably complex scripting. If you were to save bpdbjobs -all_columns every day, then you need to be mindful of the fact that each day it could end up saving 8 days of activity monitor and so therefore each actual day/date would effectively be saved multiple times - which is wasteful of disk. Unforunately bpdbjobs does not have a date range option.

[RonCaplinger]

Smith-jones,

I noticed that you have created four new discussions in one week, all related to ways to manipulate and manage the job entries in the NBU Activity Monitor, so I'm assuming you are new to NetBackup.  Forgive me if this sounds like I'm talking down to you.  I just can't tell how much you really know about NetBackup based on your posts and profile.

You've made a few comments and questions that lead me to believe that you are not aware, the jobs that appear in the activity monitor are separate from the backups themselves.  Once a backup job finishes, the backup is managed by the NetBackup Catalog, and deleting the job details in the Activity Monitor has no effect on how long the Catalog keeps the backup data. 

The Activity Monitor is meant to be used on a daily basis by the NBU admin to monitor jobs and take action immediately, if necessary, so that all of your backups are ultimately completed successfully.  Failed backups and duplications should be handled in a timely manner such that the NBU admin is able to rerun them ASAP to protect the data in the event of a recovery situation.  Assuming the NBU admin is doing their job on a daily basis, there would be no need to look back in the Activity Monitor for more than a few days at most.  For reference, we only keep 5 days of jobs in our Activity Monitor. 

Activity Monitor is not a long-term reporting tool; for keeping data on backups for more than a few days, you should be using OpsCenter, which is included free with NetBackup and pulls the job details that you see in Activity Monitor into a database that allows you to look back up to 60 days at all NBU job activity.  For even longer term retention, there is an extra-cost optional license you could purchase for OpsCenter Analytics, which will do all the above, plus let you create custom reports from the OpsCenter database and keep job data forever (potentially).

Rather than trying to figure out how to manually manage job history in Activity Monitor, or pull in data through scripts to see what happened in the past, I would suggest managing just the jobs that fail on a daily basis and correct those issues.

[smith_jones]

Thanks Marianne and RamNagalla.

Hi RonCaplinger,

I know Activity Monitor is not for monitoring purpose. The reason I asked so many questions is that -

When NDMP backup of our data is triggered some are failed and some are completed successfully or partially. Now I have to maintain one report for all this NDMP backups. Next day when I come to office I fetch report from "Status of Backups". Now all the master jobs and child jobs of my NDMP backupsare shown as "Full" that I specified while making the policy. Now to check which child job failed I have to check activity monitor and without that I am not able to identify which child jobs are failed. i need that data in activity monitor for atleast one week as per my requirements, sometimes condition arises that I need to check more than one week data and without activity monitor logs I cannot identify which child job (never in reports). So this is important to me. To be aware of the circumstances that I can face I asked questions of deletion of logs from activity monitor.

So these many questions.

By the way Marianne and I both have learnt one thing.

Marianne wrote -

"Ihave no idea why anyone would want to delete jobs in Activity Monitor and then restore from catalog backup...

I have never tried it and not even sure if jobs db is backed up by catalog backup...

If you look at the files and folders under ..db\jobs, you will see that there is no single log/file per day, but multiple files for each job id in different sub folders."

I have just checked BAR GUI (NBU-Catalog policy type) on our in-house lab server.

jobs database is not backed up as part of Catalog backup.

See attached screenshot.

Thanks to all.

All the information were very useful. I tried all practically and found you guys correct.