Archiving Agents
This section describes the Archive profile and the Archiving agents. The agents are forwarding agents that you use in batch workflows to archive data batches for a configurable period of time. Each data batch is written as a file to a user-specified repository, where the system retains it and later purges it according to defined retention rules.
Archive profile and directory structure
The Archive profile controls the behavior of the Archiving agents. Depending on the selected profile, the Archive services perform the following tasks:
Name and store each archived file.
Regularly purge outdated files.
The system uses the Directory Templates and base directories that you define in the Archive profile to build directory structures dynamically when it stores files. The system administrator defines the appropriate directory structure for each profile. For example, the directory structure can organize files by agent name and date. The Archive services automatically create all required directories recursively under the configured base directory.
Archiving agent types
There are two Archiving agent types:
They differ in the following areas:
Area | Archiving agent | Local Archiving agent |
|---|---|---|
Data storage and export | Stores data on the platform machine. | Stores data locally on the Execution Context machine. Locally stored data cannot be exported. |
Handling outdated files | The Workflow Types | Archive Cleaner task deletes outdated files based on the purge criteria that you define in the Archive profile and the Archive Cleaner scheduling in the Archive Cleaner workflow group configuration. | The workflow that contains the Local Archiving agent deletes outdated files. The workflow removes outdated files from the archive directory according to the retention settings in the Archive profile. The Archive Cleaner task workflow does not delete Local Archiving agent files. |
Archive Inspector support | Stores a corresponding reference in the Platform database. This reference allows the Archive Inspector to browse and purge archived data batch files. | Does not store a database reference and is not supported by the Archive Inspector. |
For more information about how the system maintains outdated files, see Maintaining Archives.
Configuration
You configure an Archiving agent in three steps:
Define an Archive profile.
Configure the agent.
Set the
MultiForwardingUDRinput.