Introduced in NetWorker v7 was a feature called “Monitor RAP”. There’s two unfortunate aspects to this setting in the NetWorker server resource (“NSR”):
- It is not enabled by default;
- The setting name obfuscates the purpose of the setting for most users.
Personally, I would have preferred when this option was made available that it was called “Audit Changes”, and that it was enabled by default.
In the NetWorker management console, with diagnostic mode enabled, this option is available in the first tab of the NetWorker server properties:
With this setting enabled, NetWorker maintains a new log, rap.log, within the logs directory. This tracks changes that are made to the NetWorker configuration, as they are made.
Here’s an example:
06/30/2009 06:49:19 PM MONITOR_RAP: preston@archon CHANGED 'NSR group' resource, Staging Development: autostart: Enabled; autostart: Disabled;
This tells us that at 18:49:19 on 30 June 2009, user ‘preston’ on host ‘archon’ changed the group ‘Staging Development’, changing ‘autostart’ from ‘Enabled’ to ‘Disabled’.
This means that from the NetWorker level*, you can easily keep track of who does what to the NetWorker configuration. Interestingly, you can also use this information to also track self-changes to the system – i.e., where NetWorker updates its own configuration. As an example, if you use a license manager, then whenever NetWorker updates/checks its licenses against the license server, you’ll get entries in the logs such as:
06/30/2009 05:10:00 PM MONITOR_RAP: root@nox CHANGED 'NSR license' resource,
Autochanger Module, 40 slots/40:
checksum:
"'j&P_-QFc]]D~GIQ\_[q-jMFx;ajW%U~\1^UvCm`dJEwg/
T#XGMpaVYet\l]M\w\{QQ\\
WuR]"Ax*@^XX'[ZAG388M)I6fvztWrC9q"G3PeML!wl
{P6L0]JU9a9[{WYZ";
checksum:
"Z$EP_Jts]gYNZV_ATn]AZSxcTorL#f2("8/PTcIYec}K+}
e_GGsJ$6IC)QLTz\_aS?[|lc^\Z
rN9}A~L@}?b^Vlud-e:SD+Js<U]T!eXR"y/,bQHO
0_CShOlw?U1h\g?";
Using the Monitor RAP setting allows you to easily monitor changes to the NetWorker configuration, and I believe that every NetWorker site should always have this setting enabled.
—
* Auditing is also available within NMC. For maximum auditing, I always recommend that both options be used.