Running up.time with an MS SQL Server database

• Step 1 - Preparing your MS SQL Database
• Step 2 - Configuring up.time
• Step 3 - Resetting the up.time DataStore
• Step 4 - Restarting up.time

The up.time DataStore can run on a Microsoft SQL Server database to leverage existing SQL Server installations and take advantage of SQL Server's advanced replication, recovery and archiving options. This article assumes that you have already installed up.time and have a SQL Server database available (see Supported Databases for version details).

To run up.time with a SQL Server database, first create a database on your SQL Server default instance that up.time will be able to use. If you are unsure which databases are available to you or how to create a new database, please contact your database administrator and have a database configured for up.time. Currently, the up.time database is only supported on the default instance of the SQL Server, not a named instance.

Within the SQL Server database that will hold up.time configuration and historical data, create a user account that up.time will use to access the database. The settings that you define for the up.time database user are generally flexible with the following exceptions:

• The up.time user must be the owner of the database that up.time will use.
• The up.time user must allow SQL authentication (Windows authentication is not currently available).

NOTE: The SQL Server database should not be on the same system as the up.time monitoring station.

After you have created the SQL Server database and set up the up.time database, you need to configure up.time to access the new database.

To do this, edit the uptime.conf file (located in the up.time installation folder) add a # character at the beginning of each of the following lines:

dbDriver=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
dbType=mysql
dbHostname=localhost
dbPort=3307
dbName=uptime
dbUsername=uptime
dbPassword=uptime

Just below the lines listed above, there is a second group of lines in the uptime.conf file that define how up.time will connect to a SQL Server database (see below). Remove the # character from the beginning of these lines and update the dbHost, dbPort, dbName, dbUsername and dbPassword to match the settings of your SQL Server database and the user that you created in Step 1.

#dbDriver=net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver
#dbType=mssql
#dbHostname=10.1.1.124
#dbPort=1433
#dbName=uptime
#dbUsername=uptime
#dbPassword=password

Reset the up.time DataStore settings to create the tables and default values required by up.time on your SQL Server database. To do this, first make sure the uptime data.collector service is stopped before run the following command on your up.time monitoring station:

up.time_install_path/resetdb really

NOTE: This command will reset any existing up.time-specific database settings. Before running this command, ensure that the settings in the uptime.conf file are correct.

After the resetdb utility has finished updating your database settings, restart the up.time data.collector service. When up.time starts, it will be running from your SQL Server database with an empty up.time installation.

Now that uptime is successfully started and running from your MS-SQL database, we no longer need to have the local mysql datastore. Which means that we can disable the unneeded service to free up some resources on the monitoring station itself.

This is done via the Window Services tool typically found in the 'Administrator Tools' section of the Start Menu or from within Computer/Server Management. You'll first want to locate and stop the 'up.time Data Store' service. Once the service is stopped, you'll need to right click on the service name, and select 'Properties' from the context menu. On the general tab of the window that opens, you should see a drop down menu for 'Startup type' that currently shows 'Automatic'. You'll want to change this option to 'Disabled' , and then click OK to save your changes.