About log pushing

Log pushing defined

When log pushing is the log switching technique, the NetCache appliance pushes logs to an FTP or a Web server at a specific interval, at preset times, or when a log file reaches a specified file size. You configure the criteria that determine when the logs are pushed. You cannot set the file size larger than 1,999 MB.

Note
Messages log files are never pushed.

The NetCache appliance keeps the current log file and up to 10 previous log files on disk. After the NetCache appliance successfully pushes a log file to the FTP or Web server, the NetCache appliance deletes the log from storage.

Why choose log pushing?

You might choose to set up log pushing for archival purposes or if your organization needs postprocessing log analysis.

Server requirements for log pushing

The server to which you want to push logs must be running an FTP or a Web server and must allow the NetCache appliance to rename and delete files in the directory you specify as the log repository. Network Appliance recommends that you set up a user account for the NetCache appliance logging on the FTP or Web server and push the logs to that location.

What happens if a log push is not successful

If a regularly scheduled log push is not successful, the NetCache appliance attempts every five minutes to push the logs to the FTP or Web server. The log push interval is not configurable. The NetCache appliance continues to attempt to push the logs every five minutes until it succeeds.

During this time, the log file that was not pushed is saved to disk and is not accessible. If another scheduled push time occurs and NetCache still cannot push the log files successfully, NetCache saves these log files to disk.

If the log push continues to be unsuccessful, NetCache sends an Autosupport message every hour stating that the log push failed. NetCache continues to try pushing the log files indefinitely or until you change the log management technique to log rotation.

When the problem that caused the push to fail is resolved, NetCache continuously pushes the first 10 files from the spool. Five minutes later, NetCache pushes the next 10 log files from the spool. NetCache continues pushing 10 log files from the spool every five minutes until all log files have been pushed.

Note
The behavior described in this section does not apply to the data logged through the Streaming on-demand monitoring feature and sent to servers.

File renaming when logs are pushed

When the NetCache appliance pushes the logs, it renames the active log files by appending the host name and a timestamp to the name of the log file.

What happens if you turn off log pushing

If you disable log pushing and do not reenable it within five minutes, NetCache deletes all log files that have not yet been pushed to the FTP or Web server.