Best Practice Guide for Logs collection and configuring retention count
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Best Practice Guide for Logs collection and configuring retention count

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Article ID: 28442

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Updated On:

Products

CA Release Automation - Release Operations Center (Nolio) CA Release Automation - DataManagement Server (Nolio)

Issue/Introduction

This document outlines the logs, thread dump, etc. that are needed to analyze and identify the root cause of a problem.
It is advisable to collect these logs while opening a Support Case.



    There are various logs generated by CA Release Automation, each having rolling up index and file size.
    Among all logs, there are some important logs which are recommended to be retained using a large retention number (log retention no.) to prevent overwriting of events.

    Environment

    All Versions of CA Release Automation

    Resolution

    The value for number of log files and their size is determined considering disk space available in an environment. A trade-off can be made between file-size and retention number.



    • Number for MaxBackupIndex (log retention no.) value should be set to a large number in large environments, especially for Management and Execution servers. 

      • For example: in environments with 100+ agents connected to a Execution Server, MaxBackupIndex can be either set to 200 (size 5MB) or 100 (size 10MB).



    • We recommend to derive and evaluate most feasible numbers for file size and MaxBackupIndex to provide logs coverage of 24 hours duration.


     

    Important Log files - Component Wise 



    Component File Location Important Log Files Modification to increase log file number
    Management Server \webapps\datamanagement\WEB-INF\log4j.properties
    • <Install Directory>/logs/nolio_dm_all.log
    • <Install Directory>/logs/active_mq_nac.log
    		 log4j.appender.RegularDM.MaxBackupIndex=30
    Execution Server \webapps\execution\WEB-INF\log4j.properties
    • <Install Directory>/logs/nimi.log
    • <Install Directory>/logs/Nolio_exec_all.log
    • <Install Directory>logs/execution.log
    • <Install Directory>logs/active_mq_nes.log
    • log4j.appender.RegularExecution.MaxBackupIndex=20
    • log4j.appender.ExecutionFileAppender.MaxBackupIndex=20
    • log4j.appender.NimiFileAppender.MaxBackupIndex=30
    Agent \conf\log4j.properties
    • <Install Directory>/logs/nimi.log
    • <Install Directory>/logs/nolio_all.log
    • <Install Directory>/logs/nolio_action_exe.log
    • log4j.appender.Regular.MaxBackupIndex=15
    • log4j.appender.NimiFileAppender.MaxBackupIndex=30
    • log4j.appender.ActionsAppender.MaxBackupIndex=15
    Retrieval/Repository Agents ** \conf\log4j.properties
    • <Install Directory>/logs/nimi.log
    • <Install Directory>/logs/nolio_all.log
    • <Install Directory>/logs/nolio_action_exe.log
    • log4j.appender.Regular.MaxBackupIndex=20
    • log4j.appender.NimiFileAppender.MaxBackupIndex=20
    • log4j.appender.ActionsAppender.MaxBackupIndex=30



    ** Retrieval or Repository agents, in product terminology refer to agents which are responsible for fulfilling request to download and distribute artifacts.
     



    When and how to collect log files?



    • Collection and sharing of specific log files component wise listed above is quick and can help in most of cases, but in some scenarios we need all the logs to identify the root cause of an issue. As a best practice we recommend to collect all logs from the affected component before they are overwritten.
    •  The logs listed below need to be collected when an issue occurs, preferably prior to the restart of NAC or any other services
      Component Good to have
      Management Server All logs
      Execution Server(If multiple Execution servers we need logs from all impacted) All logs
      Agent (If multiple Agents we need logs from all impacted agents) All logs
      UI All logs
    • It is recommended to collect logs using the 'Collect Logs' feature via Automation Studio: Go to the Administration tab-> Agent management console ->right click a specific agent -> Collect logs. Please refer https://comm.support.ca.com/kb/Release-Automation-KB-Easy-and-Elegant-way-to-collect-logs-via-ASAP/kb000056417
    • In situations where large number of logs are retained, it is recommended to manually collect them as the 'Collect Logs' feature will zip all logs folders irrespective of the time-frame and older logs that may not be required are also collected.



     

    Additional Information

    Beside logs, sometimes we need additional information from the product JMX console listed below:

    ComponentJMX Location (localhost need to be replaced with NAC/NES/NAG IP/Hostname)JMX Operations
    Management Serverhttp://localhost:20203/mbean?objectname=noliocenter%3Atype%3Dinfo

    Execute below operation and capture the result of below operations

       a. requestStackTrace

      b. listActiveRuns

       c. memoryStatus

    Execution Serverhttp://localhost:20203/mbean?objectname=com.nolio.nimi.jmx%3Aname%3DnimiJMX%2Ctype%3DNimiJMX

    Execute below operation and capture the result of below operations

       a. memoryDump

       b. threadDump

    Agenthttp://localhost:8282/mbean?objectname=Deployer%3Acommunication%3DnimiManager

    Execute below operation and capture the result of below operations

       a. threadDump

       b. retrieveEnginesStatus

       c. memoryDump

    Hibernate SQL Logginghttp://localhost:20203/mbean?objectname=Logging%3Atype%3DLog4j

    Execute below operation to turn on/off hibernate SQL logging

       a. turnOnHibernateSQLLogging

       b. turnOffHibernateSQLLogging

    HTTP Request Logging http://localhost:20203/mbean?objectname=Logging%3Atype%3DLog4j 
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