12.1 Understanding Database Maintenance

The operations database (by default, igops) maintains a history of activities that occur in Identity Governance. For example, as part of the data collection process, the database stores the previous state of that collection to ensure that Identity Governance can return to that state if an error occurs. Over time, however, the size of the database increases with each new collection, publication, review, and other operations. This can have an adverse effect on the performance of some database queries, because they have to filter through more and more irrelevant historical data. Identity Governance includes the Database Maintenance feature, which allows Global, Data, or Maintenance administrator to archive older data in a separate archive database, and then allows historical data to be cleaned up from the operations database.

The Database Maintenance feature provides the following:

When performing database cleanup, Identity Governance searches the operations database for purgeable items that are older than the number of retention days you specified. If you do not specify a number of retention days, Identity Governance cleans up anything that can be purged. It will not purge data that is still in a state where it might be needed for current operations. For more information about how Identity Governance decides which items can be purged, see Section 12.6, Identifying Purgeable Data. If archiving is enabled, data is archived to the archive database before it is purged from the operations database. Database cleanup will not occur if an archive fails to complete. You can disable archiving to bypass this restriction and to run cleanup in the background while performing other user tasks.

When you start database maintenance, Identity Governance selects, by default, the option for concurrent archiving, which allows archiving to occur while operations — such as collections, publications, scheduled processes, and starting reviews — are in progress. If you clear this selection, Identity Governance does not begin archiving until those operations are complete or are idling cleanly, and no new operations will start while archiving is in progress. Identity Governance operations automatically resume when archival tasks are complete or canceled. In addition, Identity Governance cannot update the operations database while an archive is in progress. Clear the selection only if you want to ensure that all updates to the operational database made by normal Identity Governance activities are archived to the archive database, and nothing is purged from the operations database until it has been properly archived.

An administrator has the ability to cancel archive and cleanup tasks while they are running. Usually, both archive and cleanup tasks run automatically, one after the other, and when they are complete, normal Identity Governance operations automatically resume. However, an administrator may also choose to pause after the archive phase, after the cleanup phase, or both. If you choose to pause after the archive phase, you must manually resume and continue to the cleanup phase or cancel the cleanup phase and return to normal operations. If you choose to pause after the cleanup phase, you must manually return to normal operations. These optional pauses give administrators opportunities to suspend Identity Governance maintenance at key points and do other maintenance tasks they may deem important before proceeding. For example, they want to look at the database, copy the database, troubleshoot issues, and so forth. The recommended and default mode of operation for maintenance is to allow Identity Governance to automatically move through the maintenance phases and then automatically return to normal operations.