Operations Dashboard operations-dashboard

CAUTION
AEM 6.4 has reached the end of extended support and this documentation is no longer updated. For further details, see our technical support periods. Find the supported versions here.

Introduction introduction

The Operations Dashboard in AEM 6 helps system operators to monitor AEM system health at a glance. It also provides auto-generated diagnosis informations on relevant aspects of AEM and allows to configure and run self-contained maintenance automation to reduce project operations and support cases significantly. The Operations Dashboard can be extended with custom health checks and maintenance tasks. Further, Operations Dashboard data can be accessed from external monitoring tools via JMX.

The Operations Dashboard:

  • Is a one-click system status to help operations departments gain efficiency
  • Provides system health overview in a single, centralized place
  • Reduces time to find, analyze and fix issues
  • Provides self-contained maintenance automation that helps reduce project operations costs significantly

It can be accessed by going to Tools - Operations from the AEM Welcome screen.

NOTE
In order to be able to access the Operations Dashboard, the logged in user must be part of the “Operators” user group. For more info, see documentation on User, Group and Access Right Administration.

Health Reports health-reports

The Health Report system provides information on the health of an AEM instance through Sling Health Checks. This can be done via either OSGI, JMX, HTTP requests (via JSON) or through the Touch UI. It offers measurements and threshold of certain configurable counters and in some cases, will offer information on how to resolve the issue.

It has several features, described below.

Health Checks health-checks

The Health Reports are a system of cards indicating good or bad health with regard to a specific product area. These cards are visualizations of the Sling Health Checks, which aggregate data from JMX and other sources and expose processed information again as MBeans. These MBeans can also be inspected in the JMX web console, under the org.apache.sling.healthcheck domain.

The Health Reports interface can be accessed through the Tools - Operations - Health Reports menu on the AEM Welcome screen, or directly through the following URL:

https://<serveraddress>:port/libs/granite/operations/content/healthreports/healthreportlist.html

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The card system exposes three possible states: OK, WARN and CRITICAL. The states are a result of rules and thresholds, which can be configured by hovering the mouse over the card and then clicking the gear icon in the action bar:

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Health Check Types health-check-types

There are two types of health checks in AEM 6:

  1. Individual Health Checks
  2. Composite Health Checks

An Individual Health Check is a single health check that corresponds to a status card. Individual Health Checks can be configured with rules or thresholds and they can provide one or more hints and links to solve identified health issues. Let’s take the “Log Errors” check as an example: if there are ERROR entries in the instance logs, you will find them on the details page of the health check. At the top of the page you will see a link to the “Log Message” analyzer in the Diagnosis Tools section, which will enable you to analyze these errors in more detail and reconfigure the loggers.

A Composite Health Check is a check that aggregates information from several individual checks.

Composite health checks are configured with the aid of filter tags. In essence, all single checks that have the same filter tag will be grouped as a composite health check. A Composite Health Check will have an OK status only if all the single checks it aggregates have OK statuses as well.

How to create Health Checks how-to-create-health-checks

In the Operations Dashboard you can visualize the result of both individual and composite Health Checks.

Creating an individual Health Check creating-an-individual-health-check

Creating an individual Health Check involves two steps: implementing a Sling Health Check and adding an entry for the Health Check in the Dashboard’s configuration nodes.

  1. In order to create a Sling Health Check, you need to create an OSGI component implementing the Sling HealthCheck interface. You will add this component inside a bundle. The properties of the component will fully identify the Health Check. Once the component is installed, a JMX MBean will automatically be created for the Health Check. See the Sling Health Check Documentation for more information.

    Example of a Sling Health Check component, written with OSGI service component annotations:

    code language-java
    @Component(service = HealthCheck.class,
    property = {
        HealthCheck.NAME + "=Example Check",
        HealthCheck.TAGS + "=example",
        HealthCheck.TAGS + "=test",
        HealthCheck.MBEAN_NAME + "=exampleHealthCheckMBean"
    })
     public class ExampleHealthCheck implements HealthCheck {
        @Override
        public Result execute() {
            // health check code
        }
     }
    
    note note
    NOTE
    The MBEAN_NAME property defines the name of the mbean that will be generated for this health check.
  2. After creating a Health Check, a new configuration node needs to be created, in order to make it accessible in the Operations Dashboard interface. For this step, it is necessary to know the JMX Mbean name of the Health Check (the MBEAN_NAME property). To create a configuration for the Health Check, open CRXDE and add a new node (of type nt:unstructured) under the following path: /apps/settings/granite/operations/hc

    The following properties should be set on the new node:

    • Name: sling:resourceType

      • Type: String
      • Value: granite/operations/components/mbean
    • Name: resource

      • Type: String
      • Value: /system/sling/monitoring/mbeans/org/apache/sling/healthcheck/HealthCheck/exampleHealthCheck
    note note
    NOTE
    The resource path above is created as follows: if the mbean name of your Health Check is “test”, add “test” to the end of the path /system/sling/monitoring/mbeans/org/apache/sling/healthcheck/HealthCheck
    So the final path will be:
    /system/sling/monitoring/mbeans/org/apache/sling/healthcheck/HealthCheck/test
    note note
    NOTE
    Make sure that the /apps/settings/granite/operations/hc path has the following properties set to true:
    sling:configCollectionInherit
    sling:configPropertyInherit
    This will tell the configuration manager to merge the new configurations with the existing ones from /libs.

Creating a Composite Health Check creating-a-composite-health-check

A Composite Health Check’s role is to aggregate a number of individual Health Checks sharing a set of common features. For instance, the Security Composite Health Check groups together all the individual health checks performing security-related verifications. The first step in order to create a composite check is to add a new OSGI configuration. For it to be displayed in the Operations Dashboard, a new configuration node needs to be added, the same way we did for a simple check.

  1. Go to the Web Configuration Manager in the OSGI Console. You can do this by accessing https://serveraddress:port/system/console/configMgr

  2. Search for the entry called Apache Sling Composite Health Check. After you find it, notice that there are two configurations already available: one for the System Checks and another one for the Security Checks.

  3. Create a new configuration by pressing the “+” button on the right hand side of the configuration. A new window will appear, as shown below:

    chlimage_1-63

  4. Create a configuration and save it. A Mbean will be created with the new configuration.

    The purpose of each configuration property is as follows:

    • Name (hc.name): The name of the Composite Health Check. A meaningful name is recommended.
    • Tags (hc.tags): The tags for this Health Check. If this composite health check is intended to be a part of another composite health check (such as in a hierarchy of health checks), add the tags this composite is related to.
    • MBean Name (hc.mbean.name): The name of the Mbean that will be given to the JMX MBean of this composite health check.
    • Filter Tags (filter.tags): This is a property specific to composite health checks. These are the tags which the composite should aggregate. The composite health check will aggregate under its group all the health checks that have any tag matching any of the filter tags of this composite. For example, a composite health check having the filter tags test and check will aggregate all the individual and composite health checks that have any of the test and check tags in their tags property ( hc.tags).
    note note
    NOTE
    A new JMX Mbean is created for each new configuration of the Apache Sling Composite Health Check.**
  5. Finally, the entry of the composite health check that has just been created needs to be added in the Operations Dashboard configuration nodes. The procedure for this is the same as with individual health checks: a node of type nt:unstructured needs to be created under /apps/settings/granite/operations/hc. The resource property of the node will be defined by the value of hc.mean.name in the OSGI configuration.

    If, for example, you created a configuration and set the hc.mbean.name value to diskusage, the configuration nodes will look like this:

    • Name: Composite Health Check

      • Type: nt:unstructured

    With the following properties:

    • Name: sling:resourceType

      • Type: String
      • Value: granite/operations/components/mbean
    • Name: resource

      • Type: String
      • Value: /system/sling/monitoring/mbeans/org/apache/sling/healthcheck/HealthCheck/diskusage
    note note
    NOTE
    If you create individual health checks that logically belong under a composite check that is already present in the Dashboard by default, they will be automatically captured and grouped under the respective composite check. Because of this, there is no need to create a new configuration node for these checks.
    For example, if you create an individual security health check, all you need to do is assign it the “security” tag, and it is installed, it will automatically appear under the Security Checks composite check in the Operations Dashboard.

Health Checks Provided with AEM health-checks-provided-with-aem

zHealthcheck Name
Description
Query Performance

This health check was simplified in AEM 6.4, and now checks the recently-refactored Oak QueryStats MBean, more specifically the SlowQueries attribute. If the statistics contain any slow queries, then the health check returns a warning. Otherwise, it returns the OK status.

The MBean for this health check is org.apache.sling.healthcheck:name=queriesStatus,type=HealthCheck.

Observation Queue Length

Observation Queue Length iterates over all Event Listeners and Background Observers, compares their queueSize to their maxQueueSize and:

  • returns Critical status if the queueSize value exceeds the maxQueueSize value (that is when events would be dropped)
  • returns Warn if the queueSize value is over the maxQueueSize * WARN_THRESHOLD (the default value is 0.75)

The maximum length of each queue comes from separate configurations (Oak and AEM), and is not configurable from this health check. The MBean for this health check is org.apache.sling.healthcheck:name=ObservationQueueLengthHealthCheck,type=HealthCheck.

Query Traversal Limits

Query Traversal Limits checks the QueryEngineSettings MBean, more specifically the LimitInMemory and LimitReads attributes, and returns the following status:

  • returns the Warn status if one of the limits is equal or higher than the Integer.MAX_VALUE
  • returns the Warn status if one of the limits is lower than 10000 (the recommended setting from Oak)
  • returns the Critical status if the QueryEngineSettings or any of the limits cannot be retrieved

The Mbean for this health check is org.apache.sling.healthcheck:name=queryTraversalLimitsBundle,type=HealthCheck.

Synchronized Clocks

This check is relevant only for document nodestore clusters. It returns the following status:

  • returns the Warn status when the instance clocks get out of sync and go over a predefined low threshold
  • returns the Critical status when the instance clocks get out of sync and go over a predefined high threshold

The Mbean for this health check is org.apache.sling.healthcheck:name=slingDiscoveryOakSynchronizedClocks,type=HealthCheck.

Asynchronous Indexes

The Asynchronous Indexes check:

  • returns Critical status if at least one indexing lane is failing

  • checks the lastIndexedTime for all indexing lanes and:

    • returns Critical status if it's more than 2 hours ago
    • returns Warning status if it's between 2 hours and 45 minutes ago
    • returns OK status if it's less than 45 minutes ago
  • if none of these conditions are met, it returns the OK status

Both the Critical and Warn status thresholds are configurable. The Mbean for this health check is org.apache.sling.healthcheck:name=asyncIndexHealthCheck,type=HealthCheck.

Note: This health check is available with AEM 6.4 and has been backported to AEM 6.3.0.1.

Large Lucene Indexes

This check uses the data exposed by the Lucene Index Statistics MBean to identify large indexes and returns:

  • a Warning status if there is an index with more than 1 billion documents
  • a Critical status if there is an index with more than 1.5 billion documents

The thresholds are configurable and the MBean for the health check is org.apache.sling.healthcheck:name=largeIndexHealthCheck,type=HealthCheck.

Note: This check is available with AEM 6.4 and has been backported to AEM 6.3.2.0.

System Maintenance

System Maintenance is a composite check that returns the OK if all maintenance tasks are running as configured. Keep in mind that:

  • each maintenance task is accompanied by an associated health check
  • if a task is not added to a maintenance window, its health check will return Critical
  • you need to configure the Audit Log and Workflow Purge maintenance tasks or otherwise remove them from the maintenance windows. If left unconfigured, these tasks will fail on the first attempted run, so the System Maintenance check will return the Critical status.
  • With AEM 6.4, there is also a check for the Lucene Binaries Maintenance task
  • on AEM 6.2 and lower, the system maintenance check returns a Warning status right after startup because the tasks never run. Starting with 6.3, they will return OK if the first maintenance window wasn't reached yet.

The MBean for this health check is org.apache.sling.healthcheck:name=systemchecks,type=HealthCheck.

Replication Queue

This check iterates over replication agents and looks at their queues. For the item at the top of the queue, the check looks at how many times the agent retried replication. If the agent retried replication more than the value of the numberOfRetriesAllowed parameter, it returns a warning. The numberOfRetriesAllowed parameter is configurable.

The MBean for this health check is org.apache.sling.healthcheck:name=replicationQueue,type=HealthCheck.

Sling Jobs

Sling Jobs checks the number of jobs queued in the JobManager, compares it to the maxNumQueueJobs threshold, and:

  • returns Critical if more than the maxNumQueueJobs are in the queue
  • returns Critical if there are long-running active jobs that are older than 1 hour
  • returns Critical if there are queued jobs, and the last finished job time is older than 1 hour

Only the maximum number of queued jobs parameter is configurable and it has the default value of 1000.

The MBean for this health check is org.apache.sling.healthcheck:name=slingJobs,type=HealthCheck.

Request Performance

This check looks at the granite.request.metrics.timer Sling metricand:

  • returns Critical if the 75th percentile value is over the critical threshold (the default value is 500 milliseconds)
  • returns Warn if the 75th percentile value is over the warn threshold (the default value is 200 milliseconds)

The MBean for this health check is org.apache.sling.healthcheck:name=requestsStatus,type=HealthCheck.

Log Errors

This check returns the Warn status if there are errors in the log.

The MBean for this health check is org.apache.sling.healthcheck:name=logErrorHealthCheck,type=HealthCheck.

Disk Space

The Disk Space check looks at the FileStoreStats MBean, retrieves the size of the Node Store and the amount of usable disk space on the Node Store partition, and:

  • returns Warn if the usable disk space to repository size ratio is less than the warn threshold (the default value is 10)
  • returns Critical if the usable disk space to repository size ratio is less than the critical threshold (the default value is 2)

Both thresholds are configurable. The check only works on instances with a Segment Store.

The MBean for this health check is org.apache.sling.healthcheck:name=DiskSpaceHealthCheck,type=HealthCheck.

Scheduler Health Check

This check returns a warning if the instance has Quartz jobs running for more than 60 seconds. The acceptable duration threshold is configurable.

The MBean for this health check is org.apache.sling.healthcheck:name=slingCommonsSchedulerHealthCheck,type=HealthCheck.

Security Checks

The Security check is a composite which aggregates the results of multiple security-related checks. These individual health checks address different concerns from the security checklist available at the Security Checklist documentation page. The check is useful as a security smoke test when the instance is started.

The MBean for this health check is org.apache.sling.healthcheck:name=securitychecks,type=HealthCheck

Active Bundles

Active Bundles checks the state of all bundles and:

  • returns the Warn status if any of the bundles is not active or (starting, with lazy activation)
  • it ignores the status of bundles in the ignore list

The ignore list parameter is configurable.

The MBean for this health check is org.apache.sling.healthcheck:name=inactiveBundles,type=HealthCheck.

Code Cache Check

This is a Health Check that verifies several JVM conditions that can trigger a CodeCache bug present in Java 7:

  • returns Warn if the instance is running on Java 7, with Code Cache flushing enabled
  • returns Warn if the instance is running on Java 7, and the Reserved Code Cache size is less than a minimum threshold (the default value is 90MB)

The minimum.code.cache.size threshold is configurable. For more information about the bug, check this page.

The MBean for this health check is org.apache.sling.healthcheck:name=codeCacheHealthCheck,type=HealthCheck.

Resource Search Path Errors

Checks if there are any resources in the path /apps/foundation/components/primary and:

  • returns Warn if there are child nodes under /apps/foundation/components/primary

The MBean for this health check is org.apache.sling.healthcheck:name=resourceSearchPathErrorHealthCheck,type=HealthCheck.

Monitoring with Nagios monitoring-with-nagios

The Health Check Dashboard can integrate with Nagios via the Granite JMX Mbeans. The below example illustrates how to add a check that shows used memory on the server running AEM.

  1. Setup and install Nagios on the monitoring server.

  2. Next, install the Nagios Remote Plugin Executor (NRPE).

    note note
    NOTE
    For more info on how to install Nagios and NRPE on your system, please consult the Nagios Documentation.
  3. Add a host definition for the AEM server. This can be done via the Nagios XI Web Interface, by using the Configuration Manager:

    1. Open a browser and point to the Nagios server.
    2. Press the Configure button in the top menu.
    3. In the left pane, press the Core Config Manager under Advanced Configuration.
    4. Press the Hosts link under the Monitoring section.
    5. Add the host definition:

    chlimage_1-416

    Below is an example of a host configuration file, in case you are using Nagios Core:

    code language-xml
    define host {
       address 192.168.0.5
       max_check_attempts 3
       check_period 24x7
       check-command check-host-alive
       contacts admin
       notification_interval 60
       notification_period 24x7
    }
    
  4. Install Nagios and NRPE on the AEM server.

  5. Install the check_http_json plugin on both servers.

  6. Define a generic JSON check command on both servers:

    code language-xml
    define command{
    
        command_name    check_http_json-int
    
        command_line    /usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_http_json --user "$ARG1$" --pass "$ARG2$" -u 'https://$HOSTNAME$:$ARG3$/$ARG4$' -e '$ARG5$' -w '$ARG6$' -c '$ARG7$'
    
    }
    
  7. Add a service for used memory on the AEM server:

    code language-xml
    define service {
    
        use generic-service
    
        host_name my.remote.host
    
        service_description AEM Author Used Memory
    
        check_command  check_http_json-int!<cq-user>!<cq-password>!<cq-port>!system/sling/monitoring/mbeans/java/lang/Memory.infinity.json!{noname}.mbean:attributes.HeapMemoryUsage.mbean:attributes.used.mbean:value!<warn-threshold-in-bytes>!<critical-threshold-in-bytes>
    
        }
    
  8. Check your Nagios dashboard for the newly created service:

    chlimage_1-417

Diagnosis tools diagnosis-tools

The Operation Dashboard also provides access to Diagnosis Tools that can help finding and troubleshooting root causes of the warnings coming from the Health Check Dashboard, as well as providing important debug information for system operators.

Amongst its most important features are:

  • A log message analyzer
  • The ability to access heap and thread dumps
  • Requests and query performance analyzers

You can reach the Diagnosis Tools screen by going to Tools - Operations - Diagnosis from the AEM Welcome screen. You can also access the screen by directly accessing the following URL: https://serveraddress:port/libs/granite/operations/content/diagnosis.html

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Log Messages log-messages

The log messages User Interface will display all ERROR messages by default. If you want to have more log messages displayed, you need to configure a logger with the appropriate log level.

The log messages use an in memory log appender and therefore, are not related to the log files. Another consequence is that changing the log levels in this UI will not change the information that gets logged in the traditional log files. Adding and removing loggers in this UI will only affect the in memory logger. Also, note that changing the logger configurations will be reflected in the future of the in memory logger - the entries that are already logged and are not relevant anymore are not deleted, but similar entries will not be logged in the future.

You can configure what gets logged by providing logger configurations from the upper left gear button in the UI. There, you can add, remove or update logger configurations. A logger configuration is composed of a log level (WARN / INFO / DEBUG) and a filter name. The filter name has the role of filtering the source of the log messages that get logged. Alternatively, if a logger should capture all the log messages for the specified level, the filter name should be “root”. Setting the level of a logger will trigger the capture of all the messages with a level equal or higher than the one specified.

Examples:

  • If you plan on capturing all the ERROR messages - no configuration is required. All the ERROR messages are captured by default.

  • If you plan on capturing all the ERROR, WARN and INFO messages - the logger name should be set to: “root”, and the logger level to: INFO.

  • If you plan on capturing all the messages coming from a certain package (for example com.adobe.granite) - the logger name should be set to: “com.adobe.granite”, and the logger level to: DEBUG (this will capture all the ERROR, WARN, INFO and DEBUG messages), as shown in the image below.

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NOTE
You can not set a logger name to capture only ERROR messages via a specified filter. By default, all the ERROR messages are captured.
NOTE
The log messages user interface does not reflect the actual error log. Unless you are configuring other types of log messages in the UI, you will see ERROR messages only. For how to display specific log messages, see instructions above.
NOTE
The settings in the diagnosis page do not influence what is logged to the log files and vice-versa. So, while the error log might catch INFO messages, you might not see them in the log messages UI. Also, through the UI it’s possible to catch DEBUG messages from certain packages without it affecting the error log. For more information on how to configure the log files, see Logging.
NOTE
With AEM 6.4, maintenance tasks are logged out of the box in a more information rich format at the INFO level. This allows for better visiblity into the state of the maintenance tasks.
In case you are using third party tools (such as Splunk) to monitor and react to maintenance task activity you can make use of the following log statements:
Log level: INFO
DATE+TIME [MaintanceLogger] Name=<MT_NAME>, Status=<MT_STATUS>, Time=<MT_TIME>, Error=<MT_ERROR>, Details=<MT_DETAILS>

Request performance request-performance

The Request Performance page allows the analysis of the slowest page requests processed. Only content requests will be registered on this page. More specifically, the following requests will be captured:

  1. Requests accessing resources under /content
  2. Requests accessing resources under /etc/design
  3. Requests having the ".html" extension

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The page displays:

  • The time when the request was made
  • The URL and the method of request
  • The duration in milliseconds

By default, the slowest 20 page requests are captured, but the limit can be modified in the Configuration Manager.

Query Performance query-performance

The Query Performance page allows the analysis of the slowest queries performed by the system. This information is provided by the repository in a JMX Mbean. In Jackrabbit, the com.adobe.granite.QueryStat JMX Mbean provides this information, while in the Oak repository, it is offered by org.apache.jackrabbit.oak.QueryStats.

The page displays:

  • The time when the query was made
  • The language of the query
  • The number of times the query was issued
  • The statement of the query
  • The duration in milliseconds

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Explain Query explain-query

For any given query, Oak attempts to figure out the best way to execute based on the Oak indexes defined in the repository under the oak:index node. Depending on the query, different indexes may be chosen by Oak. Understanding how Oak is executing a query is the first step to optimizing the query.

The Explain Query is a tool that explains how Oak is executing a query. It can be accessed by going to Tools - Operations - Diagnosis from the AEM Welcome Screen, then clicking on Query Performance and switching over to the Explain Query tab.

Features

  • Supports the Xpath, JCR-SQL and JCR-SQL2 query languages
  • Reports the actual execution time of the provided query
  • Detects slow queries and warns about queries that could be potentially slow
  • Reports the Oak index used to execute the query
  • Displays the actual Oak Query engine explanation
  • Provides click-to-load list of Slow and Popular queries

Once you are in the Explain Query UI, all you need to do in order to use it is enter the query and press the Explain button:

chlimage_1-422

The first entry in the Query Explanation section is the actual explanation. The explanation will show the type of index that was used to execute the query.

The second entry is the execution plan.

Ticking the Include execution time box before running the query will also show the amount of time the query was executed in, allowing for more information that can be used for optimizing the indexes for your application or deployment.

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The Index Manager the-index-manager

The purpose of the Index Manager is to facilitate index management such as maintaining indexes, or viewing their status.

It can be accessed by going to **Tools - Operations - Diagnosis **from the Welcome Screen, and then clicking the Index Manager button.

It can also be accessed directly at this URL: https://serveraddress:port/libs/granite/operations/content/diagnosistools/indexManager.html

chlimage_1-424

The UI can be used to filter indexes in the table by typing in the filter criteria in the search box in the upper left corner of the screen.

Download Status ZIP download-status-zip

This will trigger the download of a zip containing useful information about the system status and configuration. The archive contains contains instance configurations, a list of bundles, OSGI, Sling metrics and statistics and this can result in a large file. You can reduce the impact of large status files by using the **Download Status ZIP **window. The window can be accessed from: AEM > Tools > Operations > Diagnosis > Download Status ZIP.

From this window you can select what to export (log files and or thread dumps) and the number of days of logs included in the download relative to the current date.

download_status_zip

Download Thread Dump download-thread-dump

This will trigger the download of a zip containing information about the threads present in the system. Information about each thread is provided, such as its status, the classloader and the stacktrace.

Download Heap Dump download-heap-dump

You also have the ability to download a snapshot of the heap, in order to analyze it at a later time. Take note that this will trigger the download of a large file, in the order of hundreds of megabytes.

Automated Maintenance Tasks automated-maintenance-tasks

The Automated Maintenance Tasks page is a place where you can view and track recommended maintenance tasks scheduled for periodic execution. The tasks are integrated with the Health Check system. The tasks can also be manually executed from the interface.

In order to get to the Maintenance page in the Operations Dashboard, you need to go to Tools - Operations - Dashboard - Maintenance from the AEM Welcome screen, or directly follow this link:

https://serveraddress:port/libs/granite/operations/content/maintenance.html

The following tasks are available in the Operations Dashboard:

  1. The **Revision Clean Up **task, located under the Daily Maintenance Window menu.

  2. The **Lucene Binaries Cleanup **task, located under the Daily Maintenance Window menu.

  3. The **Workflow purge **task, located under the Weekly Maintenance Window menu.

  4. The Data Store Garbage Collection task, located under the Weekly Maintenance Window menu.

  5. The Audit Log Maintenance task, located under the Weekly Maintenance Window menu.

  6. The Version Purge Maintenance task, located under the Weekly Maintenance Window menu.

The default timing for the daily maintenance window is 2 to 5 AM. The tasks configured to run in the weekly maintenance window will execute between 1 and 2 AM on Saturdays.

You can also configure the timings by pressing the gear icon on any of the two maintenance cards:

chlimage_1-425

NOTE
Since AEM 6.1, the existing maintenance windows can also be configured to run monthly.

Revision Clean Up revision-clean-up

For more information on performing Revision Clean Up for AEM 6.4, see this dedicated article.

Lucene Binaries Cleanup lucene-binaries-cleanup

By using the Lucene Binaries Cleanup task, you can purge lucene binaries and reduce the running data store size requirement. This is because the lucene’s binary churn will be re-claimed daily instead of the earlier dependency on a successful data store garbage collection run.

Though the maintenance task was developed to reduce Lucene related revision garbage, there are general efficiency gains when running the task:

  • The weekly execution of the data store garbage collection task will complete more quickly
  • It may also slightly improve the overall AEM performance

You can access the Lucene Binaries Cleanup task from: AEM > Tools > Operations > Maintenance > Daily Maintenance Window > Lucene Binaries Cleanup.

Data Store Garbage Collection data-store-garbage-collection

For details on Data Store Garbage Collection, see the dedicated documentation page.

Workflow purge workflow-purge

Workflows can also be purged from the Maintenance Dashboard. In order to run the Workflow Purge task, you need to:

  1. Click on the Weekly Maintenance Window page.
  2. In the following page, click the Play button in the Workflow purge card.
NOTE
For more detailed information about Workflow Maintenance, see this page.

Audit Log Maintenance audit-log-maintenance

For Audit Log Maintenance, see the separate documentation page.

Version Purge version-purge

You can schedule the Version Purge maintenance task to delete old versions automatically. As a result, this minimizes the need to manually use the Version Purge tools. You can schedule and configure the Version Purge task by accessing Tools > Operations > Maintenance > Weekly Maintenance Window and following these steps:

  1. Click the Add button.

  2. Choose Version Purge from the drop-down menu.

    version_purge_maintenancetask

  3. To configure the Version Purge task, click on the gears icon on the newly created Version Purge maintenance card.

    version_purge_taskconfiguration

With AEM 6.4, you can stop the Version Purge maintenance task as follows:

  • Automatically - If the scheduled maintenance window closes before the task can complete, the task stops automatically. It will resume when the next maintenance window opens.
  • Manually - To manually stop the task, on the Version Purge maintenance card, click the Stop icon. On the next execution, the task will safely resume.
NOTE
To stop the maintenance task means to suspend its execution without losing track of the job already in progress.
CAUTION
In order to optimize the repository size you should run the version purge task frequently. The task should be scheduled outside of business hours when there is a limited amount of traffic.

Custom Maintenance Tasks custom-maintenance-tasks

Custom maintenance tasks can be implemented as OSGi services. As the maintenance task infrastructure is based on Apache Sling’s job handling, a maintenance task must implement the java interface [org.apache.sling.event.jobs.consumer.JobExecutor](https://sling.apache.org/apidocs/sling7/org/apache/sling/event/jobs/consumer/JobExecutor.html). In addition, it must declare several service registration properties to be detected as a maintenance task, as listed below:

Service Property Name
Description
Example
Type
granite.maintenance.isStoppable
Boolean attribute defining whether the task can be stopped by the user. If a task declares that it is stoppable it must check during its execution whether it has been stopped and then act accordingly. The default is false.
true
Optional
granite.maintenance.mandatory
Boolean attribute defining whether a task is mandatory and must be run periodically. If a task is mandatory but currently not in any active schedule window, a Health Check will report this as an error. The default is false.
true
Optional
granite.maintenance.name
A unique name for the task - this is used to reference the task. This is usally a simple name.
MyMaintenanceTask
Required
granite.maintenance.title
A title displayed for this task
My Special Maintenance Task
Required
job.topics
This is a unique topic of the maintenance task.
The Apache Sling job handling will start a job with exactly this topic to execute the maintenance task and as the task is registered for this topic it gets executed.
The topic must start with com/adobe/granite/maintenance/job/
com/adobe/granite/maintenance/job/MyMaintenanceTask
Required

Apart from the above service properties, the process() method of the JobConsumer interface needs to be implemented by adding the code that should be executed for the maintance task. The provided JobExecutionContext can be used to output status information, check if the job is stopped by the user and create a result (success or failed).

For situations where a maintenance task should not be run on all installations (for example, run only on the publish instance), you can make the service require a configuration in order to be active by adding @Component(policy=ConfigurationPolicy.REQUIRE). You can then mark the according configuration as being run mode dependent in the repository. For more information, see Configuring OSGi.

Below is an example of a custom maintenance task that deletes files from a configurable temporary directory which have been modified in the last 24 hours:

src/main/java/com/adobe/granite/samples/maintenance/impl/DeleteTempFilesTask.java

/*

* #%L

* sample-maintenance-task

* %%

* Copyright (C) 2014 Adobe

* %%

* Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");

* you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.

* You may obtain a copy of the License at

*

* https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

*

* Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software

* distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,

* WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.

* See the License for the specific language governing permissions and

* limitations under the License.

* #L%

*/

``

package com.adobe.granite.samples.maintenance.impl;

``

import java.io.File;

import java.util.Calendar;

import java.util.Collection;

import java.util.Map;

``

import org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils;

import org.apache.commons.io.filefilter.IOFileFilter;

import org.apache.commons.io.filefilter.TrueFileFilter;

import org.apache.felix.scr.annotations.Activate;

import org.apache.felix.scr.annotations.Component;

import org.apache.felix.scr.annotations.Properties;

import org.apache.felix.scr.annotations.Property;

import org.apache.felix.scr.annotations.Service;

import org.apache.sling.commons.osgi.PropertiesUtil;

import org.apache.sling.event.jobs.Job;

import org.apache.sling.event.jobs.consumer.JobConsumer;

import org.apache.sling.event.jobs.consumer.JobExecutionContext;

import org.apache.sling.event.jobs.consumer.JobExecutionResult;

import org.apache.sling.event.jobs.consumer.JobExecutor;

import org.slf4j.Logger;

import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;

``

import com.adobe.granite.maintenance.MaintenanceConstants;

``

@Component(metatype = true,

label = "Delete Temp Files Maintenance Task",

description = "Maintatence Task which deletes files from a configurable temporary directory which have been modified in the last 24 hours.")

@Service

@Properties({

@Property(name = MaintenanceConstants.PROPERTY_TASK_NAME, value = "DeleteTempFilesTask", propertyPrivate = true),

@Property(name = MaintenanceConstants.PROPERTY_TASK_TITLE, value = "Delete Temp Files", propertyPrivate = true),

@Property(name = JobConsumer.PROPERTY_TOPICS, value = MaintenanceConstants.TASK_TOPIC_PREFIX

+ "DeleteTempFilesTask", propertyPrivate = true) })

public class DeleteTempFilesTask implements JobExecutor {

``

private static final Logger log = LoggerFactory.getLogger(DeleteTempFilesTask.class);

``

@Property(label = "Temporary Directory", description="Temporary Directory. Defaults to the java.io.tmpdir system property.")

private static final String PROP_TEMP_DIR = "temp.dir";

``

private File tempDir;

``

@Activate

private void activate(Map<string, object=""> properties) {

this.tempDir = new File(PropertiesUtil.toString(properties.get(PROP_TEMP_DIR),

System.getProperty("java.io.tmpdir")));

}

``

@Override

public JobExecutionResult process(Job job, JobExecutionContext context) {

log.info("Deleting old temp files from {}.", tempDir.getAbsolutePath());

Collection<file> files = FileUtils.listFiles(tempDir, new LastModifiedBeforeYesterdayFilter(),

TrueFileFilter.INSTANCE);

int counter = 0;

for (File file : files) {

log.debug("Deleting file {}.", file.getAbsolutePath());

counter++;

file.delete();

// TODO - capture the output of delete() and do something useful with it

}

return context.result().message(String.format("Deleted %s files.", counter)).succeeded();

}

``

/**

* IOFileFilter which filters out files which have been modified in the last 24 hours.

*

*/

private static class LastModifiedBeforeYesterdayFilter implements IOFileFilter {

``

private final long minTime;

``

private LastModifiedBeforeYesterdayFilter() {

Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();

cal.add(Calendar.DATE, -1);

this.minTime = cal.getTimeInMillis();

}

``

@Override

public boolean accept(File dir, String name) {

// this method is never actually called.

return false;

}

``

@Override

public boolean accept(File file) {

return file.lastModified() <= this.minTime;

}

}

``

}

<file></string,>

experiencemanager-java-maintenancetask-sample- src/main/java/com/adobe/granite/samples/maintenance/impl/DeleteTempFilesTask.java

Once the service is deployed, it will be exposed to the Operations Dashboard UI and can be added to one of the available maintenance schedules:

chlimage_1-426

This will add a corresponding resource at /apps/granite/operations/config/maintenance/schedule/taskname. If the task is run mode dependent, the property granite.operations.conditions.runmode needs to be set on that node with the values of the runmodes which need to be active for this maintenance task.

System Overview system-overview

The System Overview Dashboard displays a high-level overview of the configuration, hardware and health of the AEM instance. This means that system health status is transparent and all the information is aggregated in a single dashboard.

NOTE
You can also watch this video for an introduction to the System Overview Dashboard.

How To Access how-to-access

To access the System Overview Dashboard, navigate to Tools > Operations > System Overview.

system_overview_dashboard

System Overview Dashboard Explained system-overview-dashboard-explained

The table below, describes all the informations displayed in the System Overview Dashboard. Keep in mind that when there is no relevant information to show (for example, backup is not in progress, there are no health checks that are critical) the respective section will display the “No Entries” message.

You can also download a JSON file summarizing the dashboard information by clicking the Download button in the upper right-hand corner of the dashboard.The JSON endpoint is /libs/granite/operations/content/systemoverview/export.json and it can be used in a curl script for external monitoring.

Section
What information is displayed
When is it critical
Links To
Health Checks
  • a list of checks that are in Critical status
  • a list of checks that are in Warn status

Indicated visually:

  • a red tag for Critical checks
  • an orange tag for Warn checks
  • Health Reports page
Maintenance Tasks
  • a list of tasks that failed
  • a list of tasks that are currently running
  • a list of tasks that have succeeded in the last run
  • a list of tasks that have never run
  • a list of tasks that are not scheduled

Indicated visually:

  • a red tag for failed tasks
  • an orange tag for running tasks (as they might impact performance)
  • grey tags for every other status
  • Maintenance Tasks page
System
  • operating system and OS version (for example, Mac OS X)
  • system load average, as retrieved from OperatingSystemMXBeanusable
  • disk space (on the partition where the home directory is located)
  • maximum heap, as returned by MemoryMXBean
N/A
N/A
Instance
  • the AEM version
  • list of run modes
  • the date when the instance was started
N/A
N/A
Repository
  • the Oak version

  • type of node store (Segment Tar or Document)

    • if the type is document, the type of document store is displayed (RDB or Mongo)
  • if there is a custom data store:

    • for a File Data Store, the path is displayed
    • for an S3 Data store, the name of the S3 bucket is displayed
    • for a Shared S3 Data store, the name of the S3 bucket is displayed
    • for an Azure Data Store, the container is displayed
  • if there is no custom external datastore, a message indicating this fact is displayed

N/A
N/A
Distribution Agents
  • a list of agents with blocked queues
  • a list of misconfigured agents ("Configuration Error")
  • a list of agents with queue processing paused
  • a list of idle agents
  • a list of running agents (that are currently processing entries)

Indicated visually:

  • a red tag for blocked agents or configuration errors
  • an orange tag for paused agents
  • a grey tag for paused, idle or running agents
Distribution page
Replication Agents
  • a list of agents with blocked queues
  • a list of idle agents
  • a list of running agents (that are currently processing entries)

Indicated visually:

  • a red tag for blocked agents
  • a grey tag for paused agents
Replication page
Workflows
  • Workflow Jobs:

    • number of failed workflow jobs (if any)
    • number of canceled workflow jobs (if any)
  • Workflow Counts - number of workflows in a given status (if any):

    • running
    • failed
    • suspended
    • aborted

For each of the statuses presented above a query is performed, with a limit of 400 milliseconds. At 400 milliseconds, the number of entries obtained up to that point is displayed.

Not interpreted:

  • the user should investigate when there are workflows and jobs in unexpected statuses.
Workflow Failures page
Sling Jobs

Sling job counts - number of jobs in a given status (if any):

  • failed
  • queued
  • canceled
  • active

Not interpreted:

  • the user should investigate when there are jobs in unexpected statuses or with high counts.
N/A
Estimated Node Counts

Estimated number of:

  • pages
  • assets
  • tags
  • authorizables
  • total number of nodes

The total number of nodes is obtained from the nodeCounterMBean, while the rest of the statistics are obtained from IndexInfoService.

N/A
N/A
Backup
Displays "Online Backup in Progress" if this is the case.
N/A
N/A
Indexing

Displays:

  • "Indexing in progress"
  • "Query in progress"

If an indexing or query thread is present in the thread dump.

N/A
N/A
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