Avamar: How to configure client log retention and how to limit the amount of space Avtar logs consume on a client

Avamar client logs are not retained long enough or are consuming significant space on the client file system.

The administrator wants to configure how long client log files are retained for or the amount of space they can take up.

Inappropriately sized Avamar client logs.

The Avagent service manages Avamar client logs. It listens for work orders from the Avamar server and spawns Avtar to perform backup and restore jobs.

Log retention can be controlled by specifying Avagent parameters in the avagent.cmd file in the \avs\var directory.

 If avagent.cmd does not exist, a plain text file that is called avagent.cmd can be created.



The avagent.cmd file can be populated with flags to alter log retention from the default 14 days. Alternatively, they can be prevented from consuming more than a specified amount of space. These flags are:

--loglifetime=DAYS
Specifies the number of DAYS of log and maintenance files to retain. The default setting is 14 days.

--logsizecap=MB
Specifies the maximum number of megabytes (MB) that log and maintenance files can consume in each client directory. Default setting is 512 MB.

To configure Avagent to retain Avtar logs for up to 60 days with a maximum total size of 1024 MB the following to avagent.cmd.

--loglifetime=60
--logsizecap=1024

After the parameter file is saved with the new settings, the Avagent service must be restarted for the new configuration to take effect. To restart the service, follow the guidelines in the Avamar Backup Clients User Guide. In here, you will find a section for each client type titled Manually stopping the Avagent service.

If the Avamar client is short on disk space due to large Avamar cache files, see:   

• Avamar: Backup cache files growing too large and taking up disk space.

For more information relating to client logging, see the following articles:   

Only registered Dell Customers can access some of the content on the following link, using dell.com/support.

• Avamar: Gathering log files for troubleshooting Avamar client backup and restore issues
• Avamar - How to interpret avtar backup log status lines
• Avamar client logging - How to tell which files are new or changed since the last backup
• Avamar client logging Informational levels
• Avamar: How to throttle an Avamar client's consumption of system resources (CPU, network, I/O, and memory)