Usage Analysis: Stsadm properties (Office SharePoint Server)
Applies To: Office SharePoint Server 2007
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Topic Last Modified: 2017-01-23
Usage analysis is not enabled by default. If you want to use the usage analysis features for your server, you must enable the usage analysis logging process. Log files are created daily to track usage information. When the log file is processed, a flag is added to indicate that is has been processed. If you do not want to track usage analysis data and you want to conserve disk space, you can turn off data logging for usage analysis.
By default, the log files are in %programfiles%\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\logs. Inside this folder is a folder for every Web application, and under those folders, folders for each day. You can specify any other location you prefer. You can specify that up to 30 log files are created.
Note
If you choose a different log file location, you must be sure to give the STS_WPG user group Read, Write, and Update permissions to the directory. Without these permissions, the usage log files cannot be created or updated. For more information about setting permissions for a directory, see the Microsoft Windows Help system.
By default, the log files are set to be processed every day at 1:00 A.M. You can schedule the usage log to be processed at a more convenient downtime for your Web sites. If your Web sites are primarily used by internal employees, for example, you might schedule the log to be processed at night, when demand on the sites is lower than during working hours. If you have multiple servers, you can stagger the processing. For example, you can configure the processing to start at midnight, and stagger it by 15 minutes, so that server1 starts at 12:00, server2 starts at 12:15, server3 at 12:30, and so on.
Usage data is stored for 31 months. Daily information is stored for 31 days. The log files will not be deleted, even after processing. Note that usage analysis processes rely on the Microsoft SharePoint Timer service to manage the timing of log processing.
Note
When you configure usage analysis processing for a server, it takes effect for any existing Web applications. If you later add a Web application, you do not need to configure usage analysis processing to enable usage analysis for the new Web application.