For legal reasons we need to record 7 years of messages, how can I do this?

Introduction

There are various ways you can keep seven years of logs

Here are some alternatives

  1. Keep seven years of Iguana logs. Not recommended.
  2. Keep 60 days of logs and export and/or back them up regularly.
  3. Use the Translator to archive data to a database. Probably the best long term solution.

Please contact us at support@interfaceware.com if you need further help.

Issue [top]

How can I keep seven years of logs?

Solution [top]

Here are three possible solutions:

  1. Keep seven years of Iguana logs:

    The Iguana logs are not designed for archiving. At the very least you need to copy or backup the logs also (see 2 below). Also keeping long term logs will slow down log index rebuilds, see I need to keep 365 days of logs, how will it affect Iguana? You can use Iguana to view and search the logs when you need to investigate issues.

  2. Keep 60 days of Iguana logs and export and/or back them up regularly:

    Keeping a shorter period of logs and archiving them regularly makes much more sense. Simply archive the logs by copying the <log directory>\log\<YYYMMDD>.log files to another location. When you need to do investigation you can use an Iguana server to view the archived logs.

    Tip: If you use backup software to “copy” the files you may need to restore the files before you can view them (we suggest restoring to an alternate location, rather than directly to the Iguana default log directory). Then you can set a development/test Iguana Server to (temporarily) use that directory for logs so you can view them for investigation purposes(do not do this on a production server).  An advantage of this approach is that it can easily be combined with your Iguana backup and restore routine.

  3. Use the Translator to archive data to a database:

    The good news is that the code is going to be simpler than mapping your interfaces. Probably all you need to do is to save every message as a string in its original format. Because you are using the Translator you can customize the archive process to your own needs, filter messages, add timestamps/comments/etc, route messages from different channels to different databases and so on.