Using Event Messages
Notification Services logs event messages to the Application log, which is accessible from Microsoft Windows Event Viewer. These messages can assist you when troubleshooting system errors and performance problems.
Monitoring the Application Log
Even if you are not aware of application problems, you should check the Application log periodically. Regularly checking the log can help minimize latent system problems. For example, it is best to know as soon as possible if events are not being collected or notifications are not being distributed.
For more information, see Notification Services Errors and Events.
Managing the Application Log
Depending on the logging levels you configure, the Application log can grow very quickly. For example, if you log all Notification Services events and log all notification deliveries for an application that sends thousands of notifications per hour, an unmanaged Application log can quickly fill up a disk.
To manage the Application log, consider the following recommendations:
- For applications on production servers (servers that are not devoted to development or testing), log only the events required by your applications, such as error messages that can help you troubleshoot application problems. Some applications might require a higher logging level because of service agreements for notification delivery; these applications require more disk space for logging.
- If a system is performing many writes to disk to populate the event log, application performance might diminish. This is especially true for the system that hosts the Notification Services databases, since notification generation is a disk-intensive process.
- Notification Services instances frequently connects to the Database Engine. Consider changing the Database Engine login auditing so that it logs failed logins only. For more information, see How to: Configure Login Auditing (SQL Server Management Studio).
- Configure a reasonable maximum event log size and set the overwrite option to match your logging needs. For example, if you do not need events after three days, let the event log clear those events by choosing to overwrite events older than three days.
- Use filtering to show events from specific sources, such as a Notification Services instance. You can create a new view of a log, and then define a filter for that view that shows only the events of interest. You can then export the events in the view to one of the supported formats, such as a comma-delimited text file.
For additional information about using event logs, open Event Viewer Help from Event Viewer.
See Also
Concepts
Monitoring Notification Services Performance and Activity
Other Resources
Notification Services Errors and Events