File Transfer Monitor configuration

Overview Copied

Geneos Universal FTM plugin allows for monitoring arrival times of files.

It is typically employed where the Exchange FTPs the previous day’s trading reports to the client. These reports are expected to arrive at pre-defined times so that they can be automatically picked up by the back office systems for further processing.

If a report is late, but before the ‘drop dead’ time, it can be flagged as an amber warning condition. If the report is not available after the ‘drop dead’ time, this can be flagged as a red critical condition.

For example, consider a report file that is expected to be FTPd from the Exchange at 05:00 with a back office system programmed to process it at 05:30. If the report arrives before 05:00, the FTM will show green status, if the report arrives between 05:00 and 05:29:59, the status is amber, and if the report has not arrived or arrived after the 05:29:59 the status is red.

FTM works by dividing the time into monitoring periods. By default, a monitoring period starts at 12:00 noon and finishes 11:59:59 the following day. The FTM plugin is aware of the current monitoring period and any files that exist, are ignored if their timestamp is outside of the monitoring period. This ensures that FTM monitors for fresh file arrivals and does not confuse them with older files that may be there from the previous monitoring period.

It is possible to switch the monitoring period between Noon_to_noon, as described above, and Midnight_to_midnight.

Note

Monitoring periods for holiday dates and days are ignored only for daily expected period. See files > file > expectedPeriod for more details on expected periods.

View Copied

The FTM plugin can be used to monitor arrival times of any file, for example the log file of a batch process that must be run at a specific time.

Note

The date and time used by the FTM plugin are always in the timezone of the Netprobe running the sampler.

By default, all dates and times are displayed in a standard FTM format that is always in the local time of the Netprobe. The date and time format can be changed to ISO8601 format, which includes the local timezone offset. Please see displayTimeInIso8601Format in configuration.

Headline Legend Copied

Table Legend Copied

Plugin Configuration Copied

The following parameters can be configured for this plugin:

files Copied

Allows the configuration of files.

Mandatory: Yes

files > file > path Copied

The full path to the file.

Example:

/usr/data/FileX.dat

If <today>, including the < > brackets, is specified as part of the file name, it will result in the automatic substitution of the date in yyyymmdd format.

Additionally, you can include one or more formatting codes to format the date - <today%d%m%Y>.

Also, in place of the <today> keyword, you can use these keywords when specifying the filename:

Sample path configuration details for FTM plugin:

Date keyword expansions Copied

When using the +x or -x values into the date keywords to offset the date on the filename, note the following behaviours when introducing spaces (depicted as the ␣ character) in formatting:

The limitations for offsets to today, previous_monitored_day-x, and next_monitored_day+x path keywords are set to:

• Lower bounds: -3650
• Upper bounds: 3650

The invalid offsets get an expanded value equivalent to the base tag. If you have <previous_monitored_day-3651>, then the date becomes <previous_monitored_day>.

Examples:

Mandatory: Yes

files > file > additionalPaths Copied

Allows the user to configure multiple paths with filename under one file configuration in the FTM plugin. If additional paths are specified, then the FTM plugin will monitor the files in files > file > path and the files in the additional paths with the following behaviours:

• If the FTM plugin finds a file, then the details of that file are displayed in the dataview.
• If the FTM plugin finds one or more files in the list, then the details of the latest modified file are displayed in the corresponding row in the dataview.
• If the FTM plugin finds two or more files with the same modification timestamp, then the details of the first match in the list are displayed in the dataview.

When using additional paths, note the following:

• It is highly recommended to configure files > file > alias to keep the Filename column value constant and the monitoring easier for you. When files > file > alias is set, then enable the showActualFilename setting to display the actualFilename column, which shows the detected file.
• Wildcards are not supported. If any path, either main or additional, has a wildcard character, then the FTM plugin will ignore the particular file set, samplingStatus will display WARNING, and logs will include the ignored paths.
• Case insensitive filename setting will be ignored, which means that the paths under a file configuration with additional paths will always be processed as case sensitive in Unix platforms.

Limit: Only 20 additional paths can be set.

Mandatory: No

files > file > expectedArrival Copied

The expected time in the HH:MM:SS format.

Mandatory: Yes

files > file > expectedPeriod Copied

Specifies how often the file is transferred.

Possible values:

Caution

The monitoredDays and the files > file > expectedPeriod settings are not compatible. The behaviour is undefined, if these two settings are used in conjunction.

Mandatory: No

Default: daily

Daily Copied

The following are the expected times depending on the configured day, time, and monitoring period:

Note

The results below assume that the monitoredDays setting is disabled. Therefore, Saturday and Sunday are considered as holiday, and if today is Monday, then the <yesterday> tag is the date of the previous Friday.

If the expected arrival time set is earlier than the current Netprobe machine time and the expected period is set on the same day, then the expected time in the dataview will fall on the same day with delay.

Weekly Copied

Sunday - Monday

Monthly Copied

Note

For monthly expected period, if the expected period set is earlier than the current Netprobe machine day, the expected time in the dataview will fall on the expected period set, next month.

Day of month Copied

Beginning Geneos 5.4.x, the dayOfMonth option is available to the FTM sampler.

Example usage Copied

Consider the following calendar month of October 2020:

FTM dayOfMonth setting	Behaviour	Result
	The FTM sampler considers the working days of the month to be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. The file is expected to arrive on the fifth workday of the month.	The file arrives on Wednesday, 7 October 2020.
	The FTM sampler considers the working days of the month to be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. The file is expected to arrive on the third workday from the end of the month.	The file arrives on Wednesday, 28 October 2020.
	The FTM sampler considers the working days of the month to only be Friday. The file is expected to arrive on the first Friday of the month.	The file arrives on Friday, 2 October 2020.
	The FTM sampler considers the working days of the month to only be Monday. The file is expected to arrive on the last Monday of the month.	The file arrives on Monday, 26 October 2020.
	The FTM sampler considers the working days of the month to be Wednesday and Thursday. The file is expected to arrive on the 31st workday of the month. Since this workday exceeds the number of workdays in the month, the FTM sampler considers the last workday of the month, instead.	The file arrives on Thursday, 29 October 2020.
	The FTM sampler considers all days of the month. The file is expected to arrive every 10th of the month.	The file arrives on Saturday, 10 October 2020.

files > file > tzOffset Copied

The time-zone offset is used when files have date / time formatting in the filename, but the file is produced in a time-zone which may lead to the file having a different date from the expected.

The parameter specifies the number of hours difference between the time-zone the probe is running in and the time-zone in which the file is produced. For example, if the Netprobe is running in London and the file is produced in New York with a time difference of -5 hours, then tzOffset should be set to -5. This way, if the file is produced at 10pm in New York (3am in London), FTM will know to expect a filename with what will be the previous days date.

Mandatory: No

Units: Hours

Default: 0

files > file > monitoringPeriod Copied

Specifies the monitoring period. If the monitoring period is also set at the sampler level, then it will not be applied to the file.

Mandatory: No

Default: periodAlias > Noon_to_noon

files > file > monitoringPeriod > periodAlias Copied

Specifies the monitoring period using a period alias. The following are the possible values:

Mandatory: No

Default: Noon_to_noon

files > file > monitoringPeriod > periodStartTime Copied

Specifies the monitoring period using a specific time in HH:MM format. For example, if 12:00 is set as the periodStartTime, then it is the same with the Noon_to_noon period alias.

Mandatory: No

Default: 12:00

files > file > alias Copied

Specifies a more readable name for the file to be displayed in the first column of the view.

Mandatory: No

Default: Original filename

files > file > activePeriod Copied

An amount in seconds that gets added before and after the expected time of a file to provide a period during which file arrivals should be recognized and responded to and ignored otherwise. This is useful when you are monitoring the arrival of a file with the same name two or more times during the day. If a file arrives after (expectedTime + activePeriod), then none of the displayed metrics should be affected.

Mandatory: No

Default: Nothing

monitoringPeriod Copied

Specifies the monitoring period. If the monitoring period is also set at the file level, then the value in this setting will not be applied to the file.

Mandatory: No

Default: periodAlias > Noon_to_noon

monitoringPeriod > periodAlias Copied

Specifies the monitoring period using a period alias. The following are the possible values:

Mandatory: No

Default: Noon_to_noon

monitoringPeriod > periodStartTime Copied

Specifies the monitoring period using a specific time in HH:MM format. For example, if 12:00 is set as the periodStartTime, then it is the same with the Noon_to_noon period alias.

Mandatory: No

Default: 12:00

holidays Copied

Specifies the holidays, which can be defined in the following ways:

• As a date with DD-Month-[YYYY] format where
  • DD — day of the month. The leading 0 in the date is optional. For example, 1 and 01 are accepted. - Month — short or full name of the month. For example, Jan and January are accepted. - YYYY — year. When the year is not specified, the FTM plugin will automatically apply the holiday period every year.
• As a day such as monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday, and sunday.

While in the holiday period, the FTM plugin still monitors delays and file arrivals.

If the next day is set as a holiday, then the monitoring period is extended until the next monitoring period starts. For example:

• If the monitoringPeriod is Noon_to_noon and saturday and sunday are set as holidays, then on Friday, the monitoring period will start on Friday 12:00:00 and will end on Monday 11:59:59. The next non-holiday period after this will start on Monday noon.
• If the monitoringPeriod is Midnight_to_midnight and saturday and sunday are set as holidays, then the monitoring period will starts on Friday 00:00:00 and will end on Monday 23:59:59. The next non-holiday period after this will start on Monday midnight.

The monitoring period typically lasts 24 hours less 1 second. If the end of the monitoring period falls on a holiday, then the monitoring period is extended until the start of the next monitoring period. The FTM plugin always sets the expected arrival date to a non-holiday date within the monitoring period. To further illustrate this, please see examples below:

Caution

If monitoredDays is set, then any configuration in the holidays settings will not affect the FTM plugin.

Mandatory: No

Default: saturday and sunday

monitoredDays Copied

This setting allows FTM to track arriving files and compute delays only on certain days of the week. Each day will be monitored for a 24-hour period starting on the time configured in the monitoringPeriod. On a non-monitored day, all the arriving files are ignored and delays are not computed.

The holidays configuration is ignored if this option is used.

Caution

The monitoredDays and the files > file > expectedPeriod settings are not compatible. The behaviour is undefined, if these two settings are used in conjunction.

Mandatory: No

Default: If monitoredDays is not set, the configuration from the files > file > expectedPeriod setting will be applied.

consistentDateStamps Copied

By default, the FTM plugin uses the Netprobe host’s date and timestamp as reference for its date and time resolution. For example, the filename function <previous_monitored_day...> uses the Netprobe host’s date and timestamp and the value of the monitoredDays setting to determine the filename.

If consistentDateStamps is set to true, the expected filename is based on the date and time at the start of the monitoring period. For example, the filename function <previous_monitored_day...> uses the date and time of the start of the monitoring period and the value of the monitoredDays setting to determine the filename.

Mandatory: No

Default: false

displayTimeInIso8601Format Copied

Allows you to configure the date and time format in the date-time columns of the FTM dataview. If this setting is set to true, then the dates and times are displayed in ISO 8601 format. If this setting is disabled or set to false, then the dates and times are displayed in the FTM format.

The following are examples of the FTM and ISO 8601 date and time formats:

Mandatory: No

Default: false

showPreviousDay Copied

If set to true, then the FTM plugin generates and displays a separate Previous Day dataview. The data displayed in this dataview is stored in a file by the plugin when the current day ends based on the monitoringPeriod setting.

If the files > file > monitoringPeriod and monitoringPeriod are set, then the files > file > monitoringPeriod setting will be followed.

If the monitoredDays setting is configured and today is an unmonitored day, then the Previous Day dataview will display the file activities from the last monitored day.

Note

The Previous Day dataview is a snapshot of the last sample data in the previous monitoring period. Only the configured settings at the time of the last sampling of the previous monitoring period are applied in the Previous Day dataview. New settings applied in the current monitoring period will not reflect in the Previous Day dataview.

Mandatory: No

Default: false

previousDayFile Copied

The full path of the file, including the filename, that the plugin should use for writing and reading data. The plugin should have a write permission to this location and file.

Mandatory: No

Default: FTMpredaydata.dat

showActualFilename Copied

If set to true, then an additional actualFilename column showing the actual filename of each file is displayed in the dataview. This is useful when you specify a file alias.

Mandatory: No

Default: false

delayUnit Copied

Specifies the unit of time of the values displayed in the Delay column.

The following are the possible values:

Mandatory: No

Default: Seconds

sizeUnit Copied

Specifies the unit of size of the values displayed in the currentFileSize column.

The following are the possible values:

Mandatory: No

Default: Kilobytes

useChangedTime Copied

Determines whether ctime or mtime should be used when a monitored file arrived. If this setting is set to true, then ctime is used. Otherwise, mtime is used.

Mandatory: No

Default: false