Enterprise users of Cerberus FTP Server have frequently requested an integrated way to clean their reporting database. A new feature for 12.2 allows administrators to remove old audit & file records. Accessible from the database configuration page, administrators can now remove records from their database without using a database management system.

The New “Clean Tables” Database Action!

Clean Tables Drop Down

”Clean Tables” on the Database Configuration tab is an easy way to remove older records from your database. The goal here is to remove records from your database that are older than the selected interval, to help with database maintenance. From the above screen displaying the results of a “Connect” operation on a valid database, selecting an option from the “Clean Tables” drop down will delete Audit Log and File Operation records older than 1 month/6 months/1 year/2 years, and delete any file records that don’t have matching file operations.

The time periods are calendar based. For example, if you’re doing a 1 month clean on March 31, 2021 @ 1:01:00 pm it would clean before February 28, 2021 at 1:01:00 pm. And a 6 month clean requested on September 1, 2021 @ 10:00:57 am would clean before March 1, 2021 at 10:00:57 am.

After selecting a time frame (2 years in this example) you’ll get a confirmation dialog before actually performing the database operation.

Clean Database Confirmation

After confirming, audit records are created and logged to keep track of users cleaning the database in case there is a question of when an activity was done and by whom. Information on what occurred during the delete operation will be both inserted into the database and displayed on the Database Configuration UI screen.

After Deletion Audit Records

Selecting “Connect” again for statistics on the current state of your database, we can see the effects. Here we see that the 6 orphaned file entries were deleted, and the count of unique files reduced from 58 to 52. In addition, there are now 3 new user activity or audit records: the three types of deletions that resulted from the delete operation.

“Connect” database statistics

CerberusFTP Server writes matching log messages to the output logs to also reference when the deletion attempts occurred and by whom.

Log messages for Clean Database action

Availability

This exciting new feature is available now in Cerberus FTP Server Enterprise version 12.2 and beyond. We have designed the deletion dates to match up to frequently requested intervals, but we look forward to hearing how our customers use this new feature and how any additional improvements would help you with your file sharing needs. As always, we would love to hear your feedback.