Joe Dolittle pointed out that Domino has an automated log database deletion mechanism, controlled by the Log= entry in the Notes.INI file. He noted that should your server not have such an entry, then 7 days is used as the default deletion interval, so you will always have some automated deletion process in place.

I'd also point out that the log deletions managed by this parameter are, in fact, all deleted at once -- so if the retention period is set to 7 days, the server will delete all log entries older than that. The deletion stubs generated by those deletions are then purged according to the standard purge interval formula, which does do things by thirds.

In this article, I'll add some more to this discussion: look a bit deeper at what causes log databases to get large, look at some of the information that's recorded in the log,nsf, and then add some more ideas about how you can deal with it.

Useful information in Log.NSF
Firstly, how many of you are aware of all the usage data that is stored in the Log.NSF and how useful that can be? If you open a Log.NSF, you'll see a set of views listed under Usage in the left menu pane. These give access to the Session and Activity documents, collectively referred to as Activity Trends. These are recorded automatically by the server.

Session documents are stored for each user session that occurred on the server. These show how long the session was, when it occurred, what databases were accessed, and the volume of data read and written. Activity documents are written once per day, one for each database on the server. These show the database size, percentage used, view and folder sizes, and activity summaries.

Most of the time you'll not pay any attention to this data, and you'll probably not need to. But this is, in itself, quite revealing, as it shows who is accessing the server, which databases they access, how long they stay attached, which are the largest and mots active databases, and so on.

This data can assist with a number of domain management tasks, such as:

• Which databases aren't being accessed? Check the Usage/By Size view, and look for databases with no activity. Why is that?
• Which are the large databases? Again, Usage/By Size, and check the size column. Anyone with a 7Gb mail file?
• What servers are accessing this server? Look at Usage/By User. Any that you don't expect to replicate with or otherwise access your server?