Truncating System Logs

About this task

Retaining excessive data in the SOTI MobiControl database can consume significant storage space in your database. It is good practice to regularly truncate and archive old data. By default, two days of logs are stored in the main SOTI MobiControl database MobiControlDB and each night at midnight (local time of the management service), older logs are moved to the archive database MobiControlDB_Archive.

To reduce the space occupied by system logs and alerts on the SOTI MobiControl database:

Procedure

  1. Select Global Settings from the main menu.
  2. Under Global Settings, click the wrench icon beside Configure Archiving to open the Configure Logging and Alerts Maintenance dialog box.
  3. For each of the Categories, choose when to truncate data. Double-click on the applicable Truncate Data older than row to update the number and time period (days, weeks, months, or years). You can also uncheck the row to set SOTI MobiControl to never truncate or archive that category's data.
    Align the data truncation timelines with your business data retention or privacy policies.
    Note: Microsoft SQL Server Express (provided by SOTI MobiControl) has a storage limit of 10 GB. If you have a large number of devices or a lot of activity in your deployment, you may require more storage space to accommodate your log data. Consider upgrading to Microsoft SQL Server Standard. Requires purchase from Microsoft.
  4. Choose whether to archive the truncated data.
    By default, once the database is retaining the desired duration of logs, the nightly maintenance will move a day's worth of logs to the MobiControlDB_Archive and delete the oldest day's logs from the archive database. You can save those deleted logs to a file.
    1. Beside each category, under the Archive column, enable the check box.
    2. In the Archive Folder field, enter a local or network file path to the folder where you want to save the archived files.
      Make sure that SOTI MobiControl has read/write access to the specified folder.
    3. Optional: Enable the Delete archives older than option to specify a timeline for when archives should be deleted. Enter a value and choose a time period from the dropdown list. The expired files are deleted during nightly maintenance after the specified interval.
  5. Optional: Truncate files immediately.
    • Click Truncate Logs to immediately truncate log data.
    • Click Truncate Alerts to immediately truncate alert message data.
    This process does not archive the data. Archival occurs only during nightly maintenance.
  6. Click OK to save your data truncation settings

Results

Your data will now be truncated and archived according to the guidelines you set.