Back Forward Alert log

The Alert logs, a sequence of text files, supplements the Pega server logs. The Alert log file is usually named PegaRULES-Alert-YYYY-MMM-DD.log. The similar Security Alert log is named PegaRULES-AlertSecurity-YYYY-MM-DD.log.

NoteDon't confuse the Alert log with the Pega log, which contains error messages, debug messages, information messages and Java-related diagnostics. The Alert log typically contains only a small fraction of entries that appear in the full system log, usually those that identify events with performance implications.

The Alert log supports the optional Autonomic Event Services (AES) Enterprise Edition product, which summarizes and monitors alerts across multiple nodes in a cluster. See the PDN article About Autonomic Event Services (AES), Enterprise Edition.

For detailed information about each alert type, see the PDN article Performance alerts, security alerts, and AES.

Viewing or downloading the Pega log

Select> System > Tools > Logs > Log Files to view or download the current Alert log from the server to your workstation.

Select Run> My Alerts to view selected rows of the current Alert log produced by your own requestor session.

By default, to reduce the demand on system resources, the system first writes log output to a memory buffer that is 8 kilobytes in size. So the contents on the disk log file may not yet contain output written minutes ago or even in some cases hours ago, depending on volume.

Rolling the log

By default, the date portion of the alert file name indicates the date the application server was recently started on the node. You can update the prlogging.xml file or Dynamic System Setting to cause a new Alert log file to be created at the start of each day, known as "rolling" the log file. For details, see the Administration and Security 5.3 guide.

Summarizing the Alert log

The PegaRULES Log Analyzer (PLA) tool (available from the PDN) can parse and summarize alert logs, as well as other logs.

Converting the Alert log to IBM's CBE format

You can convert a PRPC Alert log to the XML format known as IBM Common Based Event (CBE), as expected by IBM's Generic Log Adapter. Optional RuleSets are required. See the PDN document Generic Logging Adapter for PegaRULES Alert log.

Definitions appender, Autonomic Event Services, Pega log, PLA, prconfig.xml file, prlogging.xml file, prconfig setting
Related topics Understanding alerts
Working with the My Alerts display
About the Log Files tool

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