August Service Manager #LyncUp Now Available – Plus Disable ECL Logs for Connectors
Published Feb 16 2019 02:21 AM 157 Views
First published on TECHNET on Aug 25, 2015



We had a full house last week for the Service Manager LyncUp Call.  With over 100 attendees we were able to demo the preview of the new portal and discuss an optional feature of Disabling ECL Logs for Connectors.  The recording is located here for download.  There was a lot of discussion around disabling ECL  Logs for Connectors so my colleague Nikhil Nehriya has provided more context below.


Disable ECL Logs for Connectors - What is the feature all about?




You can watch the following video for a quick overview of this feature. For more details, continue reading the blog.





The AD and SCCM connectors in SM can bring in large amounts of data into SM database and in doing so, they not only increase the size of the data table (where the data from these connectors are stored in SM) but also increase the size of the EntityChangeLog (ECL) table and history tables considerably. A large ECL table size can prove to be a problem and can in some cases slow down the system quite a bit.


The ECL table and the history tables in this case store details about when the data was brought into SM and what properties were added or updated for each data item.


The feature aims to bring only the data from connectors but not the logging data which go into ECL and history tables. If this feature is not desired across all connectors, we could also work on enabling/disabling this per connector i.e. have it enabled for some connector while disabled for other connectors.


What are the advantages of this feature?

With this feature enabled

1.       The sync time of the connector reduce quite a bit. We saw a 65% increase in performance in SCCM connector and 55% increase in performance for AD connector.


2.       The size of the ECL table and the history tables do not increase e.g. in our test scenarios AD connector brought in 2.2 million rows and SCCM connector brought in 11.6 million rows in ECL and history table alone. With the feature enabled no rows are added into these tables.


































Rows added to ECL & history without feature



Rows added to ECL & history with feature enabled



Sync time without feature



Sync time with feature enabled



Improvement %



AD connector



2.2 million



Nil



4 hours 25 mins



1 hour 55 mins



~ 55%



SCCM connector



11.6 million



Nil



30 hours



10 hours



~ 65%




What are the disadvantages of this feature?


Here are some disadvantages of this feature

1.       DCM incidents creation would not work when this feature is enabled


2.       Some customers may have defined workflows that keep an eye on the data being brought by the connectors. If you have defined workflows which need to be triggered when the data is brought in by connectors then enabling this feature will not trigger those workflows. Since the workflows look into the ECL table for entries and this feature doesn’t log entries in ECL table, these workflows would not work. It is advised that in such cases this feature should not be switched on.


3.       Since this feature does not write entries in the ECL and history table, the history of the creation and/or the changes to the data items (brought in by the connectors) in SM, are not recorded. That is to say, you would no longer be able to tell when a user or a computer object was imported into SM database and/or when changes to these objects were imported into SM database.


In some cases the changes to data like users and computers need be recorded in database for auditing purposes. In these cases an alternative is to get the history of changes from the source i.e. get the history of changes made to the user from AD or get the history of changes made to the computer from SCCM.



A few points to note here


a.       Switching on this feature does not turn off logging history data about work items like incident, change requests etc. They will continue to work as is.


b.      Any explicit change made by the user to the data brought in by the connectors like a user or a computer, would still be recorded in the ECL and history tables despite switching on this feature.


c.       The history of using the data brought in by connector is also recorded despite switching on the feature e.g. if a computer (brought in by SCCM connector) is added to an incident or a user is assigned as affected user, these changes are still recorded in the system.




I don’t want this feature, what should I do?


Nothing. This is an optionally feature and it is not turned on by default i.e. your system will continue to bring in data and log info about the data in the ECL and history tables.


Would you use it?


Would you like to use such a feature if it was available to you? Do you have any suggestions/comments on the feature.

Provide your feedback below and we will be actively looking for your feedback for the next 2 weeks to make decisions around this proposed feature.

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‎Mar 11 2019 10:24 AM
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