This article provides recommendations on how to manage your Chart Data Retention settings.
Whenever new chart data is created, it will use a default retention policy called “24 Hours” which stores the information indefinitely. You can probably imagine what happens when 1000’s of charts are using this policy over time.
Configure Retention Policy
To configure the retention policy, perform the following steps:
1. From the Map List window, click Edit > Server Settings.
2. From the Intermapper Server Settings window, click Retention Policies.
In the example shown above, the “Data Retention Period for New Charts” setting is set for 24 hours. This is one of 5 built-in options that you can select from, or you can create a policy that better suits your needs. Perform the following steps to create a new policy:
1. From the Intermapper Server Settings window, click the Add Database Retention Policy icon (lower left)
2. From the Create Retention Policy window, enter your values for the “Reports Data” and “Chart Data” sections. Under “Chart Data” section, click Limited. Click OK when finished.
(NOTE: Stored data may contain up to one day beyond specified limit. Chart data consumes the drive space.)
3. You are now able to select the newly created profile by clicking on the drop-down menu for “Data Retention Policy for New Charts”. In the example below, the policy “Your Policy Name Here” appears with the list of available options. After you have chosen the policy you wish to use, click OK.
Purging Chart Data
The previous section talked about configuring new retention policies and is intended for new Intermapper configurations where the task of managing chart data disk space utilization is not a preferred process. For more information regarding the process to purge chart data, refer to the Purging Chart Data section in the Intermapper User Guide.
Changing Chart Data Retention on an Existing Map
Return to the Retention Policies window and if you made a policy earlier, it should be showing at the top of the window next to the dropdown Data Retention Policy for New Charts.
Each map that is created uses a policy called Inherit. This means the map will inherit the policy selected from server settings at the top of the Intermapper Server Settings window next to the Data Retention Policy for New Charts dropdown. Inherit is the recommended setting.
You can customize each map to use a specific retention policy if needed. To do this:
1. From the Map List window, double-click on the name of the map you wish to edit. This will open a window with the name of the server/map that you selected.
2. In the window that just opened, click the Map Editor On/Off icon.
3. After clicking on the Map Editor On/Off icon, Click Edit > Map Settings.
A Map Settings window will open for the map you selected. Click Retention Policy.
This is not commonly used but the option is available if needed. This also applies to only new charts on this map. (NOTE: Existing charts associated with this map do not automatically use the selected policy.)
4. Many users just want to change what policy was being used with their new policy. Click the Dataset View icon. (This is where we can see what policy is used with the charts for this map.)
After clicking on the Dataset View icon, a window – like the one below – should display:
To select a dataset. click in the checkbox located on the left side of the dataset name. In the image above, the dataset “Demo link 1” is selected. The retention policy details for the select dataset will appear in the main section of the window.
After selecting one of the datasets the details of the retention policy will appear in the main window. In the image below, the Inherit policy is specified for Link Utilization.
The Autorecord policy may appear next to certain datasets. Most of Intermapper’s built-in probes are written to automatically record values, so regardless of whether you want to chart that data or not, it is being recorded.
From here, you can assign a retention policy to a dataset. Make sure your map is in edit mode (see step 2 above) and select the drop down next to the retention policy in question. Select the policy you created, and that dataset will now be using your policy.
Changing Chart Data Retention on Existing Maps
If you want to see what retention policy every chart is using on this map perform the following steps:
1. From the window that bears the name of the server/map you selected, click View > Expand All.
2. Left click anywhere on the left windowpane and do CTRL-A to select all items in the pane. Press the spacebar to select all the checkboxes. From here, you can see a breakdown of all the datasets used with all the charts on this map.
TIP: Let’s say you only care about Incoming Bytes/Second and Outgoing Bytes/Second. We only want those two datasets being collected with our new policy. The others can be removed. You can sort the Retention Policy column alphabetically. Change the policies in question to the correct one and choose none for the others that you don’t need. You will now only be using the new policy on the datasets needed. At this point you should be able to configure all your maps to use the retention policies of your choice.
