Best Practices for Maintaining Connect
Follow these best practices and configurations when you maintain the H2 database and the Connect application.
Maintenance
Check Points
Make sure all Alteryx products (Alteryx Connect, Alteryx Connect Metadata Loaders, Alteryx Designer, and Alteryx Server) are on the same release versions.
Ensure sufficient memory is available on the machine where the Connect application is installed to run smoothly.
Check for SSL certification expiry.
Verify if the required Connect ports are being used by any other applications.
Note
Perform the following actions only when the application is in an idle state, that is, when there are no tasks or jobs running either in the foreground or background.
Backup of H2 Database
The H2 database is prone to corruption. This can happen when database size becomes too large during multiple reads and writes. You can also encounter unexpected shutdowns of the H2 database, including while a process is running. Therefore, regular backups are mandatory.
To create a backup, go to Admin Console > Export and Import > Export. In the Database Backup section, select H2 BACKUP. Backup is created in the ac_work folder as a ZIP file.
Daily backups are recommended if Connect usage is high.
Weekly or monthly backups are recommended if Connect usage is low.
For more information, go to Export and Import.
Removing Old Versions
Currently, Connect creates a new entry for each change in the application and also creates these entries in multiple tables. Due to this, the database size increases drastically. As a result, it's required that you clean this data regularly. This keeps the size of the H2 database within expected limits and makes the application run more smoothly.
To clean the data, go to Admin Console > Performance > Removed Assets > Delete Old Versions.
Clean the data weekly if the asset modifications and updates are high.
Monthly data cleansing is recommended if the asset modifications and updates are low.
For more information on how to remove old versions, go to Performance.
Deleting Deactivated Assets
By default, Connect provides soft delete functionality. All removed assets appear under the Deactivated Assets section. If users don't require this data anymore, they can delete these data permanently by clearing the Deactivated Assets.
To delete deactivated assets, go to Admin Console > Performance > Removed Assets > Deactivated Assets > DELETE ALL.
Delete the deactivated assets weekly if there are more assets.
Monthly deletion is recommended if there are not many deactivated assets.
For more information on deactivated assets, go to Performance.
Health Checks
Health Checks are used to verify the consistency of the data across multiple tables in the database.
For a DB consistency check, go to Admin Console > Maintenance > Health Checks > RUN CHECKS. If you encounter any errors, select FIX ISSUES.
Run weekly checks if Connect usage is high.
Run monthly checks if Connect usage is low.
For more information about Health Checks, go to Maintenance.
Shrinking the H2 Database
H2 database size grows rapidly when a lot of inserts, updates, and deletes happen in the application. This is a limitation of the H2 database so it's important to regularly clean the database to prevent large database size, corruption, slowness, and so on.
To shrink the database, run any of the below commands in the H2 console.
SHUTDOWN COMPACTSHUTDOWN DEFRAG
Both commands work similarly as per H2 Documentation.
We recommend to perform this action monthly if Connect usage is low or if the database size is less than 5GB.
We recommend to perform this action weekly or bi-weekly if Connect usage is high or if the database size is more than 5GB.
To enable the H2 console, connect to the H2 database, and run the above command, follow Review Connect Usage Information or How To: Connect to the H2 Console.