Administrator's Guide

Managing Scheduled Event Records

Task	Required Privilege Class
Display information about events	Any administrator
Set the retention period for event records	System
Delete event records	System or unrestricted policy

Each scheduled client operation is called an event. All scheduled events, including their status, are tracked by the server. An event record is created in the server database whenever processing of a scheduled command is created or missed.

Querying Event Records

To help manage schedules for client operations, you can request information about scheduled and completed events. You can request general or exception reporting queries.

• To get information about past and projected scheduled processes, use a general query. If the time range you specify includes the future, the query output shows which events should occur in the future based on current schedules.

• To get information about scheduled processes that did not complete successfully, use exception reporting.

To minimize the processing time when querying events:

• Minimize the time range

• For client schedules, restrict the query to those policy domains, schedules, and client node names for which information is required

Query events regularly to see which events did not run successfully. For example, you can issue the following command to find out which events were missed in the previous 24 hours, for the DAILY_BACKUP schedule in the STANDARD policy domain:

query event standard daily_backup begindate=-1 begintime=now
enddate=today endtime=now exceptionsonly=yes

Figure 41 shows an example of the results of this query. To find out why a schedule was missed or failed, you may need to check the schedule log on the client node itself. For example, a schedule can be missed because the scheduler was not started on the client node.

Figure 41. Exception Report of Events

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                                                |
|Scheduled Start      Actual Start         Schedule Name Node Name     Status    |
|-------------------- -------------------- ------------- ------------- --------- |
|03/06/1997 20:30:00                       DAILY_BACKUP  ANDREA        Missed    |
|03/06/1997 20:30:00                       DAILY_BACKUP  EMILY         Missed    |
|                                                                                |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Figure 42 shows an example of a general report for client node GOODELL that is displayed after you enter:

query event standard weekly_backup node=goodell
enddate=today+7

Figure 42. General Report of Events

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                                                |
|Scheduled Start      Actual Start         Schedule Name Node Name     Status    |
|-------------------- -------------------- ------------- ------------- --------- |
|03/09/1997 06:40:00  03/09/1997 07:38:09  WEEKLY_BACKUP GOODELL       Started   |
|03/16/1997 06:40:00                       WEEKLY_BACKUP GOODELL       Future    |
|                                                                                |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Removing Event Records from the Database

You can specify how long event records stay in the database before the server deletes them. You can also manually remove event records from the database.

If you issue a query for events, past events may be displayed even if the event records have been deleted. The events displayed with a status of Uncertain indicate that complete information is not available because the event records have been deleted. To determine if event records have been deleted, check the message that is issued after the DELETE EVENT command is processed.

Setting the Event Record Retention Period

You can specify the retention period for event records in the database. After the retention period passes, the server automatically removes the event records from the database. At installation, the retention period is set to 10 days.

To set the retention period to 15 days, enter:

set eventretention 15

Event records are automatically removed from the database after both of the following conditions are met:

• The specified retention period has passed
• The startup window for the event has elapsed

Deleting Event Records

Because event records are deleted automatically, you do not have to manually delete them from the database. However, you may want to manually delete event records to increase available database space.

To delete all event records written prior to 11:59 p.m. on June 30, 1997, enter:

delete event 06/30/1997 23:59