Overview:
- Each night at 21h00 AMETHYST will auto archive as per archive configuration. It can archive to a USB drive, NFS Location or Windows Share or DUAL (to archive drive and NFS Location/Windows Share).
First step is to make a backup of the AMETHYST database. This is a full backup of the live database. If auto purge is enabled and your days to keep alive is for example 365 days, the database will have all the entries for the last 365 days. If auto purge was never enabled then it will be the database with all your recording details. If at some point auto purge was enabled and then disabled, it will have all the call details since auto purge was disabled.
With AMETHYST 1.6 the auto archive starts at 21h00. If archiving was already running (for example unscheduled archive), it will be stopped and the auto archive will start at 21h00. This means the database will be backed up each night (provided archive space available). With older versions, the archive would run until all outstanding recordings was archived (even if it ran over a couple of days).
The next step is to archive the recordings. Recordings is kept on the Exclusive drive. Since archiving is done every night at 21h00, AMETHYST does an incremental backup. This means only recordings that has not been archived yet will be archived.
NOTE: The archiving is not done sequentially (by date and time). It will simply start archiving all the recordings that has not been archived yet. If for example your archive drive was full and it took a month to replace the drive, you will have a backlog of a month to archive. If your new drive does not have enough space for the amount of recordings, then you need to replace it with a second drive, your archive will run over 2 drives. As archiving is not done sequentially you can have the same date folder on both drives with different recording files in them. You can also have 'gaps' in the date sequence on the 2 drives.
If AMETHYST has written a recording file to the archive drive it will list it in the log file on the archive drive. It will show the path of the exclusive drive and the recording reference in the log file. The log file is location in the root of the archive folder and the name of the file is for example 201207011-1.log. Each file can contain up to 5 000 entries, then a second log file will be created - in this example 20120711-2.log.
- If you search with AMTListen for call details of the recording you require, AMTListen will access the database you extracted. If it finds the call details in this database, it will give you the option to click on it to access the recording file. If it cannot find the recording file it will list the file path where it expects the recording as well as the recording reference number.
Go to My Computer and navigate to the file path (without the recording reference number). See if the file path exist on the archive drive. If no folder for the date of the recording, then the archive did not take place to this drive.
Why? As explained under the 'Overview' section, if the archive drive was replace or archive drives changed the archived recordings can be written to a different drive. The database will contain all the call details as per live database at time of archive. If you for example switch between archive drives each night, each drive will only have recordings for every 2nd day but the database will have all the call details for each day.
You can use the change log file entries on the archive drive to see if the recording reference is in it.
If the date folder is present, check if the reference number is in the folder. If not, also check the change log file to see if it was written to this drive(as explained above).
You will need to access your other archive drives to find the recording.
NOTE: Once AMETHYST has done a successful archive it is your responsibility to keep the archive drives safe and secure.
How do I know my archive was successful?
- To see if AMETHYST had any archive errors during the period of the recording you require, you must access the webadmin log files.
AMETHYST will archive the log files to the archive drive every month to save space on the AMETHYST server. Also see forum post - How is space maintained on the AMETHYST server
You can access the log files on the archive drive - see forum post: How do I view archived logs?
For the date in question check the admin log at 21h00 to see if the archive was successful - refer to forum post: How do I know my archive/archiving was successfull?
Conclude:
Only archived recordings will be purged from AMETHYST. If purged, then the only copy of the recordings are on the archive drive(s). You need AMTListen to access them.
If auto purge was not enabled, you can do a search on the live AMETHYST for your recording.
We suggest using DUAL archiving to ensure that you have a copy of your archive if for example the drive becomes faulty (or lost). You also have the option to make your own backups of the AMETHYST archives - see forum post: To backup my AMETHYST archive, which file types does it use?