CMDB data archive overview

How archiving works

The archiving utility performs two actions. It enables archiving for the CMDB forms participating in CDM and it creates associations. 

Strong and weak relationships affect how CIs and their relationships are archived as follows:

• Whenever two CIs are connected with a weak relationship, and if the source end-point CI is archived, the destination end-point CI and its relationships are both archived. 
• Whenever two CIs are connected with a strong relationship, and if the source end-point CI is archived, the source end-point CI and the strong relationship are archived but the destination end-point CI is not archived.

When BMC CMDB is first installed, the archiving utility is run on the master server to enable archiving for the default Common Data Model (CDM) classes.

Archiving of custom classes

In scenarios when BMC CMDB is upgraded from previous versions to version 19.02, and there are custom classes that the user has created, the archive utility enables archive for all custom classes that exist at that point in time.

Any time that you add a custom class to BMC CMDB 19.02 and later, and you want to enable archiving for the newly added classes, you must run the archive utility manually. 

To run the archive utility manually on a Windows environment, locate the batch file at <AR Install Directory>\AtriumCore\cmdb\utils\CMDBArchive and run the utility using the command runcmdbarchiveutil.cmd . For Linux, you need to run the command runcmdbarchiveutil.sh.

Archive properties

When you want to archive data from a form, you need to enable archiving for that form. Just like other properties for a form, you have to define the archive properties for a form. Some of these properties are defined as follows:

Archive Type—For the CMDB Archive Manager, the archive type is set to 'Copy to Archive and Delete from Source', which means that the data you choose from the main form are copied to the archive form and deleted from the main form.

Archive Form Name—When a  CI is archived, it is copied to the form specified in this property. For some forms, the name of the archive form is the same as the source form with an _Archive tagged to it.  For example, the archive form BMC Core: BMC_BaseElement has a name BMC Core: BMC_BaseElement_Archive. 
Relationships are archived and the data is stored in the corresponding archive form with an _Archival tagged to it.  

Archive status—If the archive status is set to be Disabled, then even if the qualification matches, the form is archived. In BMC CMDB, the archive status is set to Enabled, by default.

Archive Date—Archive Date is the date when the data should be archived but the data will be archived only when the archive date and qualification criteria match. You cannot set the archive date at the form level in CMDB Archive Manager. You can set this parameter in AR System from the AR System Archive Manager. When BMC CMDB is upgraded, the Archive Manager utility is invoked, and the utility picks up all the forms in the Common Data Model, including the information that needs to be archived.

Qualification—Qualification defines the criteria that determines which data should be archived. When a qualification is applied to a dataset or class, all CIs matching the definition are included in the archiving process.  

For example, 

‘DatasetId’= “CompQArchive” AND ‘AccountId’=”Calbro”

For setting up qualifications, attributes from the root class are only available. Use the Qualification Builder to define the criteria. The default qualification has been set as '1=2' here, so that no data is archived accidentally. 

Age—Age indicates the number of days after which data is archived. The Global setting for archive age is 90 days. All records with last modified date earlier than 90 days are considered for archiving. This value is configurable and can be modified from the Archive Manager. The AR System Archive runs once every 24 hours. 

Associations—Associations help establish a relationship between two or more forms. This relationship ensures that all the related form data is archived along with the main form when you run the archive process for the form that is getting archived.