Strategies & Purging Log Analytics Data — Oracle Management Cloud
Authors: Monowar Mukul (OCM), Nassyam Basha (Oracle ACE Director, OCM)
Introduction
Purging is standard and routine practice in the IT industry to save storage by clearing old or unnecessary logs or data. In this article we will see what the importance is of purging the log analytics data and the importance of it, using Oracle Management Cloud.
Why the Purging of Log Analytics Data?
Before purging the log analytics data, it’s very important to know why we have to purge and what are the impacts if we haven’t planned to purge properly. The OMC agents installed on the target(s), and they push the data to the Oracle management cloud, that is common behavior of Agent either in OEM or OMC. In OMC, log analytics module will index the analyzed data from the agents, and the size of the index grows, and the billing of OMC depends on the index size of the log analytics. So to avoid excessive or unnecessary billing of the old indexed data, need to prepare a better strategy to purge the data as per the customer requirement and after proper measurements.
Quiz — I: Does purging log analytics data will purge the source files? (Ex: Alert log, trace files, message files)?
Answer: No, it will not touch the source file. OMC purge only the indexed log data available with it.
Note The above quiz based on an interesting question from Oracle webinar, “Webcast: PRO4457 How to Troubleshoot Databases and Exadata Using Oracle Log Analytics” which held on 28-Feb-2019.
Quiz — II:
Purging Methods
Log analytics indexed data can be purged into two methods depending on the requirement of the data retention.
- Purge by Timestamp
- Bucket/Time Range Bucket Based
We will see how to purge the indexed data one by one.
Purge by Timestamp
In Time based purging from the OMC console, we can select the specific time so that all the indexed log data will be purge before that timestamp for example (mm/dd/yyyy hh:mi:ss AM/PM). In below example, we will access to log analytics, and then we will purge all the data before (02/18/19 12:00 AM). The good part of purging is, it will provide the estimated size that will release from the Oracle Management Console. Navigate to “Management cloud à Log Analytics à Log Admin à Storage.”
We can switch to any of the purging methods, click on “Purge By Time” and then select the timestamp to purge log data collection before the specified date and time.
By selecting the date and time, we can see below the estimated storage to reclaim after the purging.
Before purging better to double check, because OMC once purged the analyzed data cannot be reverted, then confirm to “Purge Data,” OMC will prompt for double confirmation to purge data.
After confirming then, the request will be submitted and we can track the status from the console.
Purge By Bucket
The log data stored specific time range bucket, if we purge the data then before the selected bucket get purged. If we see in the below image, we can see the bucket with period “until Feb 18, 2019.” and the size of the data purged of 2.14 GB.
Select the period as highlighted below, and OMC will prompt for the confirmation to purge the data with the period.
After purging, we can see the status as purge operation has submitted.
Summary
We’ve seen the importance of purging data to avoid unnecessary billing and also various methods available to perform purging operations with few interesting quiz questions and answers related to purging & licensing.
Authors Bio
Nassyam Basha is a Database Administrator. He has around ten years of experience as a Production Oracle DBA, currently working as Database Expert with eProseed KSA. He holds a master’s degree in Computer Applications from the University of Madras. He is an Oracle 11g Certified master an Oracle ACE Director. He actively participates in Oracle-related forums such as OTN with a status of Super Hero, Oracle support awarded as “Guru” and acting as OTN Moderator and written numerous articles with OTN and on Toad World. He maintains an Oracle technology-related blog, www.oracle-ckpt.com and can be reached at https://www.linkedin.com/in/nassyambasha/
Monowar Mukul is currently working as a Principal Oracle Database Specialist. I am an Oracle certified Master (Oracle 12c Certified Master Administration, Oracle 12c Certified Master MAA, and Oracle 11g Certified Master Administration). He has been working as an Oracle DBA consultant over 17 years with Oracle MAA space for both Exadata and non-Exadata Systems, Oracle Cloud Space and SOA Middleware. He worked across various business sectors including tertiary education, energy, government, mining and transport in Australia. He demonstrated highly developed critical thinking and analytical skills working as a Principal Oracle Database Specialist. You can find more details about him and his work achievements at https://www.linkedin.com/in/monowarmukul/
