Location of log files

[L2Fly]

Hello -

We have two servers in our SAS development environment, OA and VA. As a new SAS Admin I want to know the best practice of archiving the log files?  When I search on servers, I will find many log files in various locations and not sure which one I should archive.  I am also wondering if I need to stop SAS services before copy and archiving the log files. 

I have looked at SAS 9.4 Intelligence Platform: System Administration Guide but couldn’t find answers to my questions.

Any help or direction is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[ArtC]

If you have not already seen it, you may find this article of interest https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Communities-Library/Sweep-up-my-SAS-logs/ta-p/257385.

[L2Fly]

Thank you ArtC for your reply and info.  I did go ahead and downloaded LogConfigSweeper utility in our development environment. Here is the issue I am encountering with:

I have two servers OA and VA. On the OA I have the following directories under SASConfig (Certificates, Meta and OA).

It looks like the LogConfigSweeper.bat file is looking for level_env.bat file and that file does exists on our OA server but in two different folders and they are: \SAS\SASConfig\Meta\Lev1 AND \SAS\SASConfig\OA\Lev1

Now, I went ahead and place LogConfigSweeper into \SAS\SASConfig\OA\Lev1\Web\Utilities folder and did run \SAS\SASConfig\OA\Lev1\Web\Utilities>logconfigsweeper.bat objectspawner -output c:\tooloutput but results are some .xml files and couple of .bat files and no log files.  If I run it with -all command then I get lots of subfolders with mix of log and other files!

At the beginning of the LogConfigSweeper.bat there is a call to level_env.bat, I was wondering if I need to change that to match the location where my level_env.bat files are located.

setlocal

call "%~dp0..\..\level_env.bat"

Again your input much appreciated.

Best,

Iman

[AndrewHowell · Accepted solution]

Firstly, to locate your log files, the best place to look is in the $SASCONFIG/Lev1/Documents folder of each server, which contains files which were dynamically created when your platform was installed, including a detailed list of what was installed on that server, how to start & stop the services/spawners and (in your case) the location of all the log files.

Now what to do with your log files. SAS does not have a log file archiving & purging policy - that's up to you.

My suggestion is each month, in each folder zip the previous months' logs (201701.zip, 201702.zip, etc), and delete any logs older than (say) 3 months - if you REALLY need log files older than that, you should be able to retrieve them from your server's filesystem backup.

Best of luck.

[L2Fly]

Thank you Andrew, will give it a try and will let you know.

[L2Fly]

Hi Andrew - the $SASCONFIG/Lev1/Documents was very helpful.  It looks like on our OA server I have only one set a log files for SAS Metadata Server and on our VA the Stored Process Server, Workspcace Server, SAS Data Step Batch Server, SAS Apawners, ... all are creating a log file under the same directory.

Now just going to create some poweshell scripts to do the archiveing for me.  Thanks again for your help and info.  

Best