Getting started with Server Status Jobs

Applies to: VisualSVN Server 6.0 and later

A Server Status Job can regularly and automatically check the current state of the VisualSVN Server instance and can alert the administrator about any issues requiring attention. For example, the job can check the status of the product license installed on the server instance, the validity of the server's TLS/SSL certificate or whether free disk space for repository storage is running out.

This article describes how to create and manage Server Status Jobs and how to examine their results.

How a Server Status Job works

A Server Status Job runs regularly on a schedule, performing a series of checks on each run. To see what checks you can enable in a Server Status Job, see Configuring status checks. The run summarizes the results of all checks in a status report, which can be saved to disk and/or sent by email.

Results of status checks

Each check can finish with one of the following results displayed in the status report:

• ✅ - OK. The check has passed successfully. No action is required.
• ⚠️ - Warning. The check has detected an issue that can cause problems in the near future. The administrator should plan to address the issue. For example, the server's TLS/SSL certificate will expire in less than 30 days.
• ❌ - Critical. The check has detected an issue already affecting the server instance, or the check has failed to perform. The administrator needs to address the issue. For example, the server's TLS/SSL certificate has expired.

Creating and modifying Server Status Jobs

When installing or upgrading to VisualSVN Server 6.0 and later, a Server Status Job is created by default. You can modify existing Server Status Jobs or create new ones as follows.

Modifying an existing Server Status Job

To view or modify an existing Server Status Job in VisualSVN Server Manager, open the Jobs list from the left-hand pane. In the Jobs list, Server Status Jobs will have their Type displayed as Server status.

To view or modify the job's settings, right-click a job and select Properties. You can also disable or completely delete a job, by right-clicking it in the Jobs list and by selecting the corresponding option from its right-click context menu.

Creating a new Server Status Job

You can create a new scheduled Server Status Job as follows:

1. Start the VisualSVN Server Manager console.
2. Right-click the Jobs node in the left-hand pane.
3. Click New | Server Status Job.
4. Name the job and optionally provide a description for it. Click Next.
5. Follow the wizard to configure the job's settings.
6. Click Create.
7. Click Finish.

Settings of a Server Status Job

Configuring the job's schedule

Select the time and days of the week when the job should run. The job may overlap in time with any other background scheduled jobs.

Configuring status checks

Choose the checks that the job should perform on each run. Certain checks (currently, the Volume free space check) also have additional configuration settings. As of VisualSVN Server 6.0, the following status checks are available:

• License status. Checks the validity, usage and other attributes of the product license installed in this VisualSVN Server instance. In other words, this check identifies any license-related issues. For example, an issue may be that the Evaluation license has expired or that the number of active users has exceeded the limit defined by the size of the license.
• Server TLS/SSL certificate. Checks the validity and the expiration date of the TLS/SSL certificate installed in this VisualSVN Server instance and used for HTTPS connections. If this TLS/SSL certificate is about to expire soon (in less than 30 days) or has already expired, reports a warning or a critical status respectively.
• Replication certificate. Checks the validity and the expiration date of the Replication Certificate that is installed in this VisualSVN Server instance. This is relevant only if you use Multisite Repository Replication with certificate-based authentication, which is typically used for replication in a non-domain environment. If this instance's Replication Certificate is about to expire soon (in less than 30 days) or has already expired, reports a warning or a critical status respectively.

• Volume free space. Checks the amount of free storage space remaining on the configured disk volumes. By default, the pre-configured list includes the volumes that store the repositories, the full-text search indexes and repository backups, as of the time when the job is created. You can change the list of volumes to be checked. For each specified disk volume, you can set two thresholds for free storage space, falling below which will be reported as a warning or a critical status respectively.

  Note

  The pre-configured list includes the backup destination volume based only on the global Default backup destination setting on the Backup tab in the Properties of VisualSVN Server. It does not take into account the per-job backup destinations configured inside individual Backup Repository Jobs.

Future versions of VisualSVN Server may extend the available selection of status checks.

Leaving the Automatically enable new checks added in future updates option selected means that if new status checks become available when updating VisualSVN Server, they should be enabled by default in existing Server Status Jobs.

Configuring report destination

Each run of the Server Status Job generates a formatted HTML-based server status report. Select one or more destinations to which you want to direct the server status reports:

• Save to disk
  Saves each status report as an HTML file to the specified location. The default location is:
  C:\Users\Public\Documents\VisualSVN Server\StatusReports\
  The filename of each report will contain a timestamp with the date and time of the report.

• Send by email
  Sends the status report to the default Administrative email address defined in administrative notifications, or to the specified custom email addresses.

  Note

  To be able to use an email destination, administrative email notifications should be globally enabled and configured in the Properties of VisualSVN Server, regardless of whether you select the default or a custom email destination.

  Selecting the Skip sending status report on success option instructs the job to email the status report only if any issue has been found, i.e. any check has finished with a warning or a critical status. This option applies only to email destinations.

Configuring job notifications

You can select what results of the background job runs you would like to be notified of. The prerequisites and the available settings for such Job Notifications are the same for all types of background jobs in VisualSVN Server. See the article KB185: Understanding Background Job notifications for details.

Managing Server Status Jobs

Every configured job, including Server Status Jobs, is shown within the Jobs element in VisualSVN Server Manager. For each job you can see its name, type, status and the result of the job's last run. Server Status Jobs will have their Type displayed as Server status.

The current state of the job is shown in the Status column. Possible values are the following:

• Ready. The job is in standby mode. It is active and ready to start.
• Running. The job is running right now.
• Disabled. The job is deactivated and will not run on its schedule.

The result of the last run is shown in the Last Run column. Possible values are the following:

• Success. The run generated and saved/sent the report to all the configured Report Destinations.
• Error. The run failed to generate or save/send the report to any of the configured Report Destinations because of an error. For example, the destination folder for saving the report does not exist or administrative email notifications are configured incorrectly.
• Warning. An email destination is selected in the job's settings, but the run skipped sending the status report by email, because administrative email notifications are disabled globally.
• Interrupted. The running job has been interrupted and did not complete.

The outcome of the job's last run is also indicated by the overlay icon near its name. Additionally, the Last Run Details column contains brief information about the outcome of the job's last run.

See also

KB185: Understanding Background Job notifications