Trace Settings in CallManager

[jraarons]

Anyone seen any problems resulting from changing the Trace Configuration setting for CallManager SDI 3.2? Currently we get a new file every minute or so, which means you may have to look in alot of files to find a particular phone call.

Present Settings;

Maximum No. of Files : 250

Maximum No. of Lines per File : 1000

Maximum No. of Minutes per File : 1440

Proposed Settings

Maximum No. of Files : 500

Maximum No. of Lines per File : 10000

Maximum No. of Minutes per File : 14400

[dakeller]

The size and rate of of trace file creation is directly correlated to:

1) the trace level (Error, arbitrary, detailed, etc)

2) the components you have selected to trace

3) the number of active phones on a given server.

Based on your current settings and the size of your installation, it would not suprise me that you are consuming a single trace file every minute or so. In very busy systems, we sometimes see 2 or 3 log files that span a single minute.

Your proposed settings are just as good. The biggest bang for your buck will be in the changing of the number of lines per file. The default and maximum value for CM3.2 is 10000. The maximum number of files you can select in CM 3.2 is 1-300. In you case, 500 is out of range. Prevous versions (CM3.0(x)) you could set that value to 999, but in CM 3.1(x) and later, we are limiting the number of files to 300.

Thanks,

Dan Keller

Cisco Systems

[jraarons]

Yes we found we couldn't troubleshoot problems on CallManager unless we removed the trace files quckly as they were overwritten.

With a 6GB of free space I wish I could edit the SQL to increase the trace files beyond 300 to say 1000. I'd be happy to buy a 70GB Hard Disk if I could get more logs/diagnostics on why CallManager is having problems.

Instead I have to explain we can't figure out what happened because the Saturday logs were overwritten long before Monday am..

We provide this as a feedback to our Cisco SE and Account Manager, so they can request this as a change for the next call manager versions. (I think they are growing tired of all our suggestions...)

[dgoodwin]

As I'm sure you're aware, putting additional hard disks in the CallManager is definitely not supported at this time, and obviously by increasing the maximum number of trace files the web page lets you enter can be playing with fire... if the CallManager runs very low on hard disk space it could be A Bad Thing.

In any case, one thing you could certainly do if you like is to write a batch file (.cmd in Win2k world) on another server in your network that has oodles of hard disk space that maps a drive to the CallManager(s), copies the trace files out from the CallManager and puts them into a folder with the date as a name, and possibly zips them up. Then you could run this .cmd script on that other server as a Scheduled Task.

It's not pretty, but hopefully it will save you from these situations.