InformixHQ - Sensor and Alert for "Backups per dbspace"
Leandro Kohler asked what the InformixHQ sensor Backups per dbspace returns for a Last Level 0 Backup alert over 24 hours. Doug Lawry and Edcel Barcena showed the value is a Unix epoch timestamp, convertible with DBINFO('utc_to_datetime'). Leandro said this does not give backup age, so no alert is possible. Unresolved.
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Hi, In HQ, I have an alert set for the "backups per dbspace" sensor. Does anyone know what metric this sensor returns exactly? I'd like to create an alert with these conditions: Backups per dbspace - Last Level 0 Backup - is greater then: 24 (hours) The last value this alert returned was: (1752628201.0) InformixHQ Alert on TRICHEM-PRD - Backup archive: Last Level 0 Backup of 1 (1752628201.0) is greater than 24 ------------------------------ Leandro Kohler ------------------------------
Hi Leandro. SELECT DBINFO ('utc_to_datetime',1752628201) returns 2025-07-16 02:10:01 in UK time zone. See: Using the 'utc_to_datetime' option ------------------------------ Doug Lawry Oninit Consulting ------------------------------
Hi Doug, Thanks for the information. However, I'm still not clear on how to use this metric in the InformixHQ sensor.
Hi Leandro, The metric "Backups per dbspace - Last Level 0 Backup - is greater than: 24 (hours)" monitors the age of the last Level 0 (full) backup for each dbspace in your Informix instance. If the value exceeds 24 hours, it means a full backup hasn't been taken for that specific dbspace in over a day, which could increase the risk of data loss in the event of a failure. This sensor helps ensure backups are occurring on schedule. In your example, the last value returned by the alert was: 1752628201.0 , which is in Unix epoch time . You can convert this to a human-readable format (e.g. using Doug's query or using ` date -d 1752628201` o n Linux) to determine exactly when the last Level 0 backup occurred. In my location, that results to Wed 16 Jul 2025 11:10:01 AEST. So, the last Level 0 backup for that dbspace was taken at that time. If you're evaluating this alert more than 24 hours after that timestamp, the sensor is correctly flagging that the full backup is overdue. Regards, Edcel
Edcel, thank you. But the backup age is never a constant value. As you said, I would need to convert the value the sensor returns to determine the backup's age. Therefore, I will never know (via the sensor) whether the last backup is older than 24 hours (or 12...or 6) or not. ------------------------------ Leandro Kohler ------------------------------