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Overview

up.time can generate reports on the status of the servers in your environment, based on criteria that you specify. A report uses data that up.time has collected from a system, over a period of time that you specify. You can configure reports to run between certain hours of the day.

Reports are useful when you need to pinpoint the source of a problem within you environment. With a report, you can visually analyze how individual critical resources - such as memory, CPU, and disk resources - are being consumed. You can dynamically generate and view reports, schedule and email reports to other up.time users.

This chapter looks at the options that you can set to generate, save, and schedule reports. For more information about the individual reports and how to configure them, see Using Reports.

Generating Reports

You can generate reports either dynamically or in the background. Dynamic reports are reports that up.time displays in a new Web browser window. Dynamic reports appear within several seconds or several minutes, depending on the type of report that you are generating and on the information that the report collects.

Background reports are reports that you schedule to be run at specific intervals using the up.time report queue. When it is time for a scheduled report to run, up.time puts the report into the report queue and determines that status of the report based on the following states:

Pending

The report is in the queue and is waiting to run.

Running

The report is being generated.

Completed

The report has been generated, and has been sent (via email) to the users configured to receive that report.

For information on how to schedule reports, see Scheduling Reports.

Note - If you do not receive a scheduled report, check the Report Log (see The Report Log) or contact your system administrator.

Report Generation Options

up.time can generate reports in four ways:

Print to Screen

Displays the report in a new window. This is the default option.

PDF to Screen

Converts the report to a PDF document, and displays it in a new window. You can save the PDF document to a local or network drive, or print it.

XML to Screen

Displays the report, as an unformatted XML document, in a new window.

Email Address

Enables you to email the report, as a PDF document attached to an email message, to:

  • A specific up.time user, for example a system administrator.

Click User and then select the name of an up.time user to whom you want to send the report from the dropdown list.

  • The members of one or more up.time user groups.

Click Group and then select the name of an up.time user group to which you want to send the report from the dropdown list.

  • One or more email addresses.

Click the Email Address option, and then type the email address of the person to whom you want to send the report in the field. To send the report to multiple recipients, type their email addresses in the field separated by commas or semi-colons. For example:

Reports that are sent by email have a file name that consists of the type of report and the date and time range it covers. For example, a CPU Utilization Ratio report might be named:

ReportCPUUtilizationRatio_2006-01-10_00-00-2006-01-10_14-53.pdf

If you choose to output the report to the screen, a message appears while the report is being generated. When the report has been generated, it is displayed in the report window. If up.time cannot connect to a host, the following error message appears in the report window:

An error occurred while running this report. Verify the configuration of up.time and try again.

Saving Reports

If you find that you need to generate reports on a regular or frequent basis, you can save the parameters for the report to the DataStore. A link to the report appears in the My Portal panel. Click the link to generate the report. As well, see Report Generation Options for information on how up.time outputs reports.

Note - You can also schedule reports to be generated and sent by email at particular intervals. See Scheduling Reports for more information.

To save reports, do the following:
  1. In the Save Report area of the Report subpanel, select one of the following options:
  2. HTML
  3. PDF
  4. XML
  5. Email
  6. If you selected Email in step 1, specify one of the email options.
  7. Type a name for the report in the Save to My Portal As field.
  8. Optionally, type a description for the report in the Report Description field.
  9. Click Save Report .

Saving Reports to the File System

You can save reports to the file system of a server in your environment so others in your organization can view the reports. You can, for example, save a report to a Web server for viewing on your Intranet. The reports are saved as either PDF or HTML files. The system administrator can specify the directory on the server in which reports will be saved by adding the following entry to the file uptime.conf :

publishedReportRoot=<directory_name>

Where <directory_name> the directory into which up.time will write reports - for example, C:/Program Files/uptime software/uptime/ . The report files are saved to a subdirectory named GUI/published . You need permissions to write to the published directory.

up.time automatically names each report file. The file name contains the following information:

name of the report, taken from the My Portal panel
date on which the report was run
user name of the person who ran the report

The following is an example of a report file name:

Service Outages_2006-01-24_rfripp.pdf

To save reports to a file system, do the following:
  1. In the Save Report area of the Report subpanel, enter a name for the report in the Save to My Portal As field.
  2. Optionally, enter a description of the report in the Description field.
  3. Select either HTML or PDF from the list of options.
  4. Click the Publish Report option.
  5. Click the Scheduled Report option, and then select a a date and time for the report to run.
    For more information on scheduling reports, see Scheduling Reports.
  6. Click Save Report .

Viewing Saved Reports

You can quickly view any reports that were generated on the Monitoring Station and saved to the file system. To do so, do the following:

  1. On the tool bar, click Reports .
  2. Click Published Reports in the Tree panel.

The Report Library window appears. The Report Library window lists the reports that were generated on the Monitoring Station in descending order by date.

Using the Search Function

The Report Library window includes a search function that enables you to find specific reports.

To use the search function, do the following:
  1. In the Published Reports window, click the Search button.
    The Search Options appear in the window.
  2. Select one of the following options from the Search Column dropdown list:
    • Year
    • Month
    • Name
    • Date
    • User
  3. Specify the criteria for the search, and then click the Search button to view the results on the Report Library page.

Scheduling Reports

If you need to run a report at a particular interval - for example, daily or weekly - you can schedule when the report should be generated. up.time generates the report and emails it to a user or group of users.For example, you generate a File System Capacity Growth Report - which charts the amount of disk usage for a system. However, the system for which you are generating the report schedules backups from midnight to 4:00 a.m. Due to the gap caused by the backup, the CPU usage and disk activity statistics are not indicative of the overall system load. You can specify that the report does not cover the periods of time over which the backups occur.

To schedule reports, do the following:
  1. In the Reports subpanel, select the Email option in the Save Report section of the subpanel, and then select one of the following options:
    • User
    • Group
    • E-mail Address
  2. Type a name for the report in the Save to My Portal As field.
  3. Optionally, type a description for the report in the Report Description field.
  4. Click the Scheduled Reports checkbox, and then select the time at which to run the report from the dropdown lists.
  5. Select one of the following options:
  6. Daily
    • Click the Every option, and select the number of days from the dropdown list.
      or
    • Click the Every Weekday option.
  7. Weekly
    • Select a number of weeks from the Every week(s) on dropdown list. If, for example, you select 2 from the list, the report will be run every two weeks.
      or
    • Select one or more days of the week on which the report will be run.
  8. Monthly
    • Select the Day option. From the first dropdown list, select the day (from 1 to 31) on which to run the report. Then, select the month (from 1 to 12) during which to run the report.
      For example, if you select 3 and 7 from the dropdown lists, the report will be run on the third day of every seventh month.
      or
    • Select the second option, then do the following:
      • select first, second, third, fourth, or last from the first dropdown list
      • select a day of the week on which the report will run from the second dropdown list
      • select a number from 1 to 12 from the third dropdown list
        For example, if you select second , Tuesday , and 9 from the dropdown lists, the report will be run on the second Tuesday of every ninth month. As well, see Report Generation Options for information on how up.time outputs reports.

The Report Log

The Report Log tracks the progress and status of scheduled reports, or reports that are running in the background. Using the Report Log, you can quickly determine whether or not reports have been successfully generated. If they have not, then you can use the log to determine why report generation failed.

The Report Log subpanel tracks the status of reports in the following sections:

Pending Reports

Reports that are in the report queue, and are waiting to run. This section contains the following information:

  • the name of the report
  • the description of the report, if available
  • whether or not the report is scheduled
  • the date and time on which the report will be run
Running Reports

Reports that are being run. This section contains the same information as the Pending Reports section.

If the running report is not a scheduled report, Emailing report in PDF format appears in the Report Name column.

Completed Reports

Reports that have finished running, whether they were successfully generated or not. This section contains the following information:

  • the name of the report
  • the date and time on which the report run was started
  • the date and time on which the report run ended
  • the status of the report - for example, finished
  • a status message - for example, Email sent or Address list is empty

Viewing Report Logs

To view report logs, do the following:
  1. On the up.time tool bar, click Reports .
  2. In the Tree panel, click Report Log .

The report log appears in the Reports subpanel.

If there are no reports in the queue, up.time displays a message similar to the following ones in the Pending Reports and Running Reports sections of the Report Logs subpanel:

No reports are pending

No reports are running

Deleting Report Log Entries

Completed reports are stored in a table in the up.time DataStore. To free space in the DataStore, or to remove report log entries that you no longer need, you can delete entries in the report log from the Report Log subpanel.

To delete entries in the Report Log, do one of the following:
  • Click the Delete icon beside the entry that you want to delete.
  • If you want to delete all entries in the Report Log, click the Remove Completed Reports button.

When prompted to confirm whether or not you want to delete the report log entry, click OK .

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