3.1 AgentDown

Use this Knowledge Script to monitor the health of AppManager agents, raise events when agents are down or unavailable, and generate actions as appropriate. This script does not raise events when AppManager agents are up (running) and available. You can set the event severity for an individual agent, or you can override the severity with this script to specify one severity for any agent with issues.

This script complements the AMHealth_HeartbeatWin and AMHealth_HeartbeatUNIX Knowledge Scripts, but it is different in the following important ways:

  • Run the AMHealth_AgentDown Knowledge Script on management servers. This script queries information from the AppManager repository (QDB) to obtain agent status, which is populated by the AMHealth_Heartbeat jobs. As a result, you must run AMHealth_Heartbeat jobs on your agents as well as run an AMHealth_AgentDown job on your management server. One AgentDown job can monitor all agents for which the heartbeat is running. The AMHealth_AgentDown script supports the execution of actions.

  • Run the relevant AMHealth_HeartBeat Knowledge Scripts on the agents you wish to monitor. Select Yes for either the Raise an event if the agent heartbeat fails? parameter or the Generate heartbeat data? parameter, or select both parameters. The AMHealth_Heartbeat scripts do not support the execution of actions.

You can run this script on multiple management servers for redundancy. In this situation, each AMHealth_AgentDown job raises duplicate events and generates duplicate actions.

If you stop and restart AMHealth_HeartbeatWin and AMHealth_HeartbeatUNIX jobs, the AMHealth_AgentDown job might raise duplicate events.

3.1.1 Prerequisites

  • AppManager version 8.0.2 or later on the QDB and management server

  • AppManager version 8.0 or later on the AppManager agent

  • AMHealth version 8.0.113.0 or later on the QDB and all console computers

3.1.2 Configuring Security Manager for AMHealth_AgentDown

The AMHealth_AgentDown Knowledge Script requires credentials to connect to the AppManager Repository (QDB). If the QDB uses SQL authentication, create the following entry in Security Manager on the Custom tab:

Field

Description

Label

AMH$SQL

Sub-label

SQL user name with authority to access the QDB.

Value 1

SQL password for the user name entered in the Sub-Label field.

Value 2

Leave this field blank.

Value 3

Leave this field blank.

Extended application support

Encrypts the user name and password in Security Manager. This option must be selected.

3.1.3 Resource Objects

Management server

3.1.4 Default Schedule

The default interval for this script is every 5 minutes.

3.1.5 Setting Parameter Values

Set the following parameters as needed:

Parameter

How to Set It

General Settings

Job Failure Notification

Raise event if job fails unexpectedly?

Select Yes to raise an event if the AMHealth_AgentDown job fails unexpectedly. The default is Yes.

Event severity when job fails unexpectedly

Set the event severity level, from 1 to 40, to indicate the importance of an event that is raised when the job fails unexpectedly. The default is 5.

Additional Settings

 

Event Details

 

Event detail format

Select the format in which you want to display the event detail. You can select from HTML Table or Plain Text. The default is HTML Table.

Regardless of what you enter for this parameter, if the Action_SMTPMail action Knowledge Script is associated with an AMHealth_AgentDown job, the email displays in plain text.

Knowledge Script Settings

 

Always consolidate events?

Select Yes to raise a single event for all down agents, regardless of how many agents are down. The default is Yes.

Select No to use the Raise consolidated event if X percent of agents are down setting in Control Center for determining whether to raise a single event for all down agents, or one event per down agent. You can edit the Health Check settings in Control Center by clicking Options on the Main tab, and then clicking Health Check.

SQL logon

Specify the SQL Server user name required for access to the AppManager repository (QDB).

This setting requires an entry in AppManager Security Manager, as described in Configuring Security Manager for AMHealth_AgentDown.

Leave this field blank for Windows Authentication.

Event Settings

 

Override agent down severity?

Select Yes to use this script to specify the event severity when an agent is down. If you select No, AppManager uses the event severity for a down agent that is specified by the AMHealth_HeartbeatWin and AMHealth_HeartbeatUNIX Knowledge Scripts. The default is Yes.To prevent the duplication of agent-down events generated by both the AMHealth_Heartbeat and AMHealth_AgentDown jobs, select Yes and set the Severity for override parameter in this script to 40. Next, choose one of the following options:

  • In the Operator Console, open the File menu and select Preferences. On the Repository tab, click Event. Select Automatically close event when severity is greater than X and set it to 39. Using this option, events raised by AgentDown immediately go to Closed state, but actions are still executed.

  • On the Management Server, open the registry and navigate to \SOFTWARE\..\NetIQ\AppManager\4.0\NetIQmc\Config, and set the NoEventSev registry key to 40. Then stop and restart the NetIQMC service. With this option, the AMHealth_AgentDown job does not raise events, but the script still executes actions.

Severity for override

Set the event severity level, from 1 to 40, to indicate the importance of an event when an agent is detected as being down or unavailable. This parameter is ignored if you do not select the Override agent down severity? parameter. The default is 40.