FactoryTalk AssetCentre Log Cleanup Utility

Use FactoryTalk AssetCentre Log Cleanup Utility to manage the size of the audit, event, diagnostics logs in FactoryTalk AssetCentre.

Through the course of normal operation, the Audit, Event, and Diagnostic and Health logs of the FactoryTalk AssetCentre system can grow quite large. As a direct consequence, the Microsoft SQL database size will also expand. Due to these considerations, it is possible for an administrator of the system to remove older log messages.

To do this, users identify a group of logs (Event, Audit, or Diagnostic and Health) to remove from the system's database. The user inputs the type of log files to remove, and the date up to which they should be removed. For example, entering a date of 10/28/2007 will remove all log files up to and including that day.

Log Cleanup Wizard & Exported Log Viewer

The Log Cleanup Wizard can be found from the Tools menu, and will allow the user to edit the Event, Audit, and/or Diagnostics log, with the selected logs capable of being exported prior to deletion. These exported logs can be viewed in the FactoryTalk AssetCentre Exported Log Viewer, found from the FactoryTalk AssetCentre start menu items in CPR9 SR2 (v2.31.01) and later. The Log Cleanup Wizard can service up to 500,000 log entries at once, or 1 GB of exported data. For more information, see Knowledgebase Document ID: QA26667 - Using the FactoryTalk AssetCentre Log Clean-up Wizard from a Command Line.

Schedule Log Cleanup

Starting from FactoryTalk AssetCentre version 13.00.00, you can also use FactoryTalk AssetCentre Web Client's built-in tool, Schedule Log Cleanup, to schedule a log cleanup task. This tool can be accessed from

FactoryTalk AssetCentre Web Client

>

Tools

>

Database Management

>

Database Maintenance

.

How Time is Calculated?

Events are logged in FactoryTalk AssetCentre according to UDT, then converted to the local time zone when displayed in the AssetCentre Client. Due to this, the utility will delete logs based on the UDT time stamp, and not the current time zone. This could result in logs being left behind from the last day specified, or deleted from the one just outside the range.

Example: The Central time zone is -6:00 UDT, meaning that an event occurring at 6 p.m., 11/11/2008 Central is logged as occurring at 12:00 a.m., 11/12/2008. Thus, if 11/11/2008 was the date specified in the utility, this event would not be deleted from the log because its UDT date falls outside of the date range.

For time zones that are + UDT (e.g., Beijing), this can result in deleting records that are outside of the range specified. Beijing is +8:00 UDT, meaning that a message logged at 8 a.m. on 11/12/2008 will be stored at 12 a.m. 11/11/2008. Thus, if the date range specified was 11/11/2008, this record would be deleted despite appearing on the 12th from within the AssetCentre Client.