The WEM software relies very heavily on many components of the operating system and may at time require certain maintenance to be performed to keep it running smoothly. It processes and archives a lot of files and messages. All files are archived, and any that are not picked up by SPIRIT will linger in the WEM Outbox folder until purged or processed manually.
This means there is maintenance needed, as well as general server health practices.
All files that pass through WEM create a lot of storage usage, temporary and permanent. As a result, maintenance should be performed routinely to clear older archives of the files according to the agency's existing file retention policies.
When a file comes in from an EBT provider it is pulled down into memory, then placed in the proxy inbox for that EBT host. From there it is fed into memory and converted to the MIS format. Once in the correct format it is written to both the outbox, and the outbox archive. It now lives in 2 permanent (one of each format) and 1 transient (awaiting MIS consumption) locations. The copy in the outbox should be removed by the MIS but if missed it can live there until purged manually. Even if the file is not supported by WEM, a copy is retained in the proxy inbox.
For files coming from the MIS a similar process flow is invoked. They are delivered into the inbox and a copy is placed into the inbox archive. The inbox copy is processed and removed as it is converted to the EBT format. The EBT format file is copied to the Outbox Archive as it is sent up to the EBT environment via FTP. This means 2 permanent copies are retained (one in each format) of this file as well. There is no transient as it is deposited to a remote server instead.
The following wem-config specified paths should absolutely be included in any type of purge scripts created:
The following batch file code is intended for use on Windows Server 2008 and newer and should delete all files older than number of days from the path specified in path to files
forfiles /p "<path to files>" /s /m *.* /d -<number of days> /c "cmd /c del @path"
For example, if today is May 24 and the command is executed as follows it would delete all files in the c:\temp path and subfolders created prior to May 10.
forfiles /p "C:\temp" /s /m *.* /d -14 /c "cmd /c del @path"
When WEM is initially set up, it is recommended to leave the logging level set to "DEBUG" for a period of at least a couple of weeks. This will allow for very thorough logging while the system is becoming operational and faces the highest likelihood of configuration issues or other problems leading to support contacts. The logs are vital to helping the WEM development team get to the bottom of whatever problem may have arisen. However, once this evaluation period is complete the log level should be scaled back - because the "DEBUG" level will generate thousands of additional data messages. So once the system is running comfortably, the logger.config should be updated to set the log value to a less active level. The "ERROR" level is recommended.