Monitoring File Transfers › How You Use Historical Data for Planning

How You Use Historical Data for Planning

You can see the file transfers in action on the Active File Transfer Monitor and can react to them as problems occur. Historical data, on the other hand, helps you minimize future problems. There are two sources of historical data: the history database and the ReportCenter database.

You access the history database through the History Data menu, using the /FTHIST panel shortcut. You can search the database and generate reports using predefined or your own criteria. You can also use Report Writer (accessible using the /RW panel shortcut) to design your own 3270-based reports.

The following examples show how you can use historical data:

• If the data indicates that critical transfers are failing for the same reason, you can define rules to provide automated recovery for those failures.
• You can identify expected transfers that do not occur, which you can define schedule resources to monitor.
• You can identify FTP transfers to unauthorized sites and define rules to provide automated alerting.

Note: The history database is cleared periodically as specified in the EVENTLOG region parameter group. However, you can specify that the data be archived before clearance.

If you have implemented ReportCenter, you can generate predefined web-based reports on transfers stored in the ReportCenter database over time, for example:

• If you have implemented multisystem file transfer management, you can compare the load (for example, total bytes transferred and average transfer rate) between systems.
• You can show where transfers are busiest by source and destination.

Example: Storage Problems

Your business is impacted by file transfer storage problems at a certain destination. You want to find out the cause so you can plan for future occurrences of these problems.

1. You use ReportCenter to generate a File Transfer Address Analysis report for the destination to find out about its file transfer activities. You notice that occasionally there are a large amount of inbound bytes. You suspect that occasional transfer of huge files may be taking up the storage space, thus impacting some more critical transfers.
2. You know that all critical transfers to that destination are below a certain size. So, to confirm your suspicion, you search the history database using the destination and byte count as criteria. You find a number of transfers that match the criteria. They are unscheduled transfers from various users and are not critical.
3. You decide to move these huge files somewhere else as they arrive to free up storage for the critical transfers and notify the users who perform the transfers. You can automate these actions using a file transfer rule.