Activities
For better and easier management among all the events on Active Backup for Business, Active Backup for Business provides administrators detailed event information in Activities tab, including activity logs, activity details, and adjustable daily, weekly, monthly, and annual reports.
To access logs in Activities tab, do any of the following:
- Click Activities tab to access logs.
- In Overview tab, click on a specific day on the calendar to access logs.
- In Overview tab, click
on the top right corner of Logs section to access logs.
Please note that ongoing events will only be displayed on Ongoing Activities section in Overview tab as well as the task monitor.
Log
All the events happened on this backup server are listed in this tab.
Below are the event details you can see in the log list:
- Log Type:
Logs are categorized into the following three types:
- Information: When a task has been carried out properly and successfully, it will be recorded as an information log.
- Warning: When a task was only partially successful or canceled, it will be recorded as a warning log. It usually happens to file server and VM backups.
- Error: When the task failed thoroughly, the log will be categorized as an error log. It is suggested to click on
for more information for you to troubleshoot. The common errors could be damaged source disk, insufficient space on the NAS, etc.
- Log time:
The time when a task finished, failed, or was canceled is recorded in Log Time.
- Log Description:
Each event is summarized in one short description for instant understanding on what has happened to a certain task. For further information, you can click on the name of the task in the description to view the task.
To go to the task history of the log:
Click
at the right side of the log, and the task history including the backup duration and transferred size will be displayed for your reference.
To set retention rules for logs:
- Click on Settings.
- You can permanently preserve these logs on the backup server when not checking the options, or you can do any of the following to set the retention rules for logs:
- Check the checkbox next to The number of logs is greater than and set the number to delete logs when logs on the server is more than a designated quantity: 1 million, 3 million, 5 million, or 10 million.
- Check the checkbox next to The log was created earlier than and set the time to clear the outdated logs which are no longer needs to be preserved
- Click OK to apply your retention rules.
To export all logs:
- Click Export to export logs in a .csv file.
To delete all logs:
- Click on Settings.
- Click Delete all logs, and confirm the action if no log needs to be preserved on the server.
To send logs to a log server:
You can send the logs of Active Backup for Business to a syslog server.
- Click Settings.
- Under the Log Forwarding tab, tick Send logs to a syslog server.
- Enter the syslog server's information:
- Server: Enter the syslog server's hostname or IP address.
- Port: Enter the port number on the syslog server that will be used to receive syslog messages.
- Transfer protocol: Make sure to select the same transfer protocol as the syslog server.
- UDP: UDP is an abbreviation for User Datagram Protocol, which is a more simplified message-based connection protocol. It is faster, but the tradeoff is that is has less security and no error correction.
- TCP: TCP is an abbreviation for Transmission Control Protocol. Flow control is used to ensure that all packets have been successfully sent before processing new ones. If you select TCP, you can enable Secure log transfer with SSL and import a trusted certificate.
- Log messages format: Select the format of the logs.
- Click Send Test Log to send a test log to the syslog server.
Note:
- The default port number is 514, but you can also use a different port. Make sure to configure proper port forwarding rules.
- You can install the Log Center package to turn your Synology NAS into a syslog server.
Task History
You can view further information of each performed task and export the task's logs in Task History tab.
To view detail information of a performed task, do any of the following:
In the information window, you can view and download the following details:
- Duration: the time which the task had taken.
- Transferred size: the size of the transferred data.
- Log list: all the events which had happened during a task. You can view the complete sentence by hovering your mouse to a log.
For file server backup tasks, an additional indicator will display the counts of files that have been processed successfully, partially, or even unsuccessfully.
For VM backup tasks, an additional indicator will display the counts of VMs that have been processed successfully, partially, or even unsuccessfully.
To export task history logs:
- Click Export to export logs in a .csv file.
To check the speed and utilization rates:
Summary of the backup performances including the backup speed and the utilization rates are recorded on the log list as well.
- Find the log entry which recorded the backup speed and the utilization rates. It is recorded in the last log before the backup completion announcement.
- Hover your mouse to the log to view complete log entry.
- The average backup speed: transferred size per second.
- Utilization rates:
- Taking snapshot: the percentage time spent on taking snapshot of total duration.
- Source disk read: the percentage time spent on reading the source disk of total duration.
- Data transfer: the percentage time spent on transferring data of total duration.
- Data deduplication: the percentage time spent on deduplicating data of total duration.
- Write to file: the percentage time spent on writing to file of total duration.
Report
A detailed and adjustable report is supported on Active Backup for Business for IT admin’s routine monitor on the backup performance. This report contains most of the information in Overview tab. IT admins can generate daily, weekly, monthly, and annual reports in Report by request or by a configurable schedule.
All the generated reports are listed in Report tab. You can always click Open report at the end of each generated report entry to view the report.
Note:It is not supported to generate a report which ends earlier than today.
To generate a report instantly:
- Click Generate Report.
- Select your report type to be Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Annual.
- Daily: A daily report displays the data of the last 23 hours. For example, if a daily report is generated on July 22nd 16:30, then this report will display the data starting from July 21st 17:00.
- Weekly: A weekly report displays the data of the last 7 days. For example, if a weekly report is generated on July 22nd 16:30, this report will display the data since July 16th 00:00.
- Monthly: A monthly report displays the data of the last 31 days. For example, if a monthly report is generated on July 22nd 16:30, this report will display the data since June 22nd 00:00.
- Annual: An annual report displays the data of the last 12 months. For example, if an annual report is being generated on 2018 July 22nd 16:30, then this report will display the data since 2017 August 1st 00:00.
- If you want to send the report via email, fill in the email addresses and separate them with commas.
To generate a report by a schedule:
- Click Schedule.
- Check the checkbox next to Generate reports according to customized schedule.
- Configure your scheduled report settings.
- If you want to send the report via email, fill in the email addresses and separate them with commas.
Report Overview
- Error Task Warning: All the occurred errors during the span of selected time will be displayed in the report.
- Storage: The storage usage across different span of time can be easily monitored here.
- Volume information: Storage information of the volume where Active Backup for Business installed is displayed.
- Total backup size: The number refer to the original size of backed up data from the source side without changed block tracking, compression, or deduplication. For example, if you back up 1TB data to the NAS once a day, the total backup size of the week would be 7TB; however, this is NOT the total size that is going to be stored on your NAS.
- Increment: The increment stands for size of PC, Physical Server, and VM backup deduplicated data, plus the increment of file server backup. You can hover your mouse to each bar for detailed increment information to be displayed on the top left of the chart.
- Free space left on the day: This piece of information is collected directly from the DSM and means the actual storage capacity left in the volume.
- Estimated date of space run-out: The estimated date of space run-out may be varied according to the type of your report (daily/weekly/monthly/annual).
- Legends on the graph: There are different colors to indicate different devices, and navy blue stands for the data changes (increment) on the graph.
Note:
- Before emailing the report, please make sure the email notification setting has already been enabled in DSM > Control Panel > Notification > Email. Fill out the required information and save the changes. It is highly suggested to send a test email before closing Control Panel to make sure the availability of the setting.
- A user's accessibility to the report depends on both the user's privilege and permission settings of the group the user belongs to. If either of the permissions is set to be Deny, the user cannot access the report.