History Loader features and components

This topic provides an overview of the PATROL History Loader Knowledge Module (the PATROL HL KM).

What is History Loader Knowledge Module?

The PATROL HL KM consists of a series of application definitions, commands, and parameters associated with extracting and loading PATROL parameter history into your RDBMS (relational database management system).

After the PATROL history data is stored in an RDBMS, you can perform complex analysis and statistical planning on all monitored activity. By allowing you to export, store, review, and analyze history data, the PATROL HL KM helps you detect problems, optimize systems, analyze trends, plan capacity, and manage multiple hosts simultaneously.

This can help you ensure that your systems run efficiently 24 hours a day.

Components

The PATROL HL KM consists of two components: 

History Propagator 

The History Propagator checks the file system size on the target machine before and after sending data files. If all data files are not transferred, a message is added to the log file in <PATROL_Installation_Folder>\Log\HISTORY_Propagator-<HOST_NAME>-<PORT_NUMBER>.kmlog.

. Only one History Propagator can be installed per PATROL Agent. The History Propagator does the following:

• extracts PATROL parameter history data
• summarizes history data
• sends history data to a user-specified target machine

The History Propagator uses the dump_hist utility, which extracts PATROL parameter history data, summarizes history data, and converts history data to ASCII.

About the dump_hist Utility

The dump_hist utility contains the following options:

• -p port
• -host hostname
• -class regexp
• -inst regexp
• -param regexp
• -s mmddhhmm[yyyy]
• -e mmddhhmm[yyyy]
• -timestamp
• -annotate
• -format arguments

By default, the dump_hist utility extracts data in the following order (-format arguments are in parentheses):

• host name (%H)
• application name (%A)
• instance name (%I)
• parameter name (%P)
• year (yyyy) (%y)
• month (mm) (%m)
• day (dd) (%d)
• hour (hh) (%h)
• minutes (MM) (%M)
• seconds (ss) (%s)
• parameter value stored in param.hist file (%v)

History Loader

The History Loader component loads the propagated history data into supported RDBMS databases, into predefined tables. The History Loader component must be installed with the PATROL Agent on the RDBMS computer.
If you do not have or do not want to use one of the supported RDBMSs or applications, you can use the History Propagator component without using the History Loader component. You can create your own custom scripts to analyze the data, or you can input the data into a statistical analysis package or spreadsheet. 
If you choose not to use the History Propagator component, you cannot change the predefined ASCII output file format of the History Propagator.