Audit & Event Log Management

Through the course of normal operation, the Audit and Event logs of the FactoryTalk AssetCentre system can grow quite large. As a direct consequence, the MSSQL database size will also expand. Due to these considerations, it is recommended for an administrator of the system to back up and delete older log messages.

The Log Cleanup Wizard can be found from the Tasks menu, and will allow the user to edit the Event, Audit, and/or Diagnostics log. This utility will delete log messages from the beginning of the log (i.e., the earliest recorded messages) to a user-defined point, with the selected logs capable of being exported prior to deletion. These exported logs can be viewed using the FactoryTalk AssetCentre Exported Log Viewer, found from

Start > Rockwell Software > FactoryTalk AssetCentre Client

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In version 6.00 of FactoryTalk AssetCentre, the Log Cleanup Wizard functionality can be accessed from a command line, enabling its scheduled operation using a Windows Scheduled Task. This functionality is also available in versions 5.00 and 4.10 via the latest patches. For more information, see Knowledgebase Document ID: QA26667 - Using the FactoryTalk AssetCentre Log Clean-up Wizard from a Command Line.

Finally, if large audit and/or event log tables cannot be avoided, consider using the indexing script at Knowledgebase Document ID: QA31088 - FactoryTalk AssetCentre Audit and Event Log Performance Indexing. The script can take a significant amount of time to execute on large tables, but will also improve query performance.