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.

Don'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 component, which summarizes and monitors alerts across multiple nodes in a cluster.

Viewing or downloading the Pega log

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

Select Tools > 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.

Documentation

For detailed information about every field reported by each alert type, consult the Alert Log 5.4, a PDF document available on the Pega Developer Network.

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 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

For V5.3+ systems, the PegaRULES Log Analyzer tool (available from the Exchange area Pega Developer Network) can parse and summarize alert logs, as well as other logs.

For versions before V5.4, Pegasystems provides a Microsoft Excel 2003 XLS file containing macros that parse and summarize the contents of an alert log. Access the Pega Developer Network to obtain the latest version of this file..

Converting the Alert log to IBM's CBE format

You can convert a Process Commander 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 Pega Developer Network document Generic Logging Adapter for PegaRULES Alert log.

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

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