IBM Tivoli Monitoring > Version 6.3 Fix Pack 2 > Administrator's Guide > Manage historical data > Conversion process for using delimited flat files
IBM Tivoli Monitoring, Version 6.3 Fix Pack 2
Limit the growth of short-term history files
Whether your environment includes a data warehouse or is set up for conversion of short-term history to delimited flat files, it is a good idea to set a maximum size for the history files.
Your operating system user ID must have write permission for this directory. These agent environment variables are not available on z/OS.
When your configuration includes data roll-off to the Tivoli Data Warehouse, the size of the short-term history files is controlled by the amount of data being collected, the frequency of collection, and the frequency of roll-off to the data warehouse. Yet, it is possible for the warehouse proxy agent or data warehouse to become unavailable, which means the short-term history files can grow unchecked.
Set the KHD_TOTAL_HIST_MAXSIZE and KHD_HISTSIZE_EVAL_INTERVAL environment variables at every Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Agent where historical data is collected or at the Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server if data collection occurs there. Complete these steps to specify a size limit for the directory where short-term history files are saved and how often that this check should take place:
Procedure
- Open the environment file for the agent:
- In the Manage Tivoli Monitoring Services window, right-click the component and click Advanced → Edit ENV File. (These are the install_dir\TMAITM6\K<pc>ENV files where <pc> is the two-character product code, such as C:\IBM\ITM\TMAITM6\KNTENV.)
- Change to the install_dir/config directory and open <pc>.ini in a text editor, where <pc> is the two-character product code. For example, /opt/IBM/ITM/config/ux.ini for the UNIX OS agent.
For a list of product codes see "IBM Tivoli product, platform, and component codes" in the IBM Tivoli Monitoring Installation and Setup Guide.
- Add two new lines to the file, where 5 is the maximum number of megabytes that the directory where the short-term history file is located can grow to; and where 900 (15 minutes) is the number of seconds between evaluation of the directory size:
KHD_TOTAL_HIST_MAXSIZE =5 KHD_HISTSIZE_EVAL_INTERVAL=900
- Save and close the file.
- Recycle the component.
Results
After you set a maximum and the directory limit is reached, no new records are written to the short-term history files, which causes gaps to occur in the data collected. However, if the data is warehoused, the warehouse proxy will trim the short term history files to contain only the last 24 hours of data. This can allow the agent to write historical data again; thus, the limit can be reached again and the process repeats. This process can also cause gaps to appear in the data.
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Conversion process for using delimited flat files