Before installing and using Availant Manager 1.0, please
read the following notes describing Availant Manager features,
requirements, general usage, and known issues. This information
is current and accurate as of
November 10, 2000.
Before installing Availant Manager, you must have the following:
See below for additional details.
For additional information: Please refer to the foldout Quick Start Guide as you begin installing this product. Also see the comprehensive instructions on installation, rule configuration, and troubleshooting in the Getting Started with Availant Manager guide, available in PDF for viewing and printing. For detailed help while using Availant Manager, refer to the information panel found on each page of the user interface. For FAQ and support information, see www.availant.com/products.
Version 1.0 Features
Requirements
General Product Usage Notes
Known Issues
Availant Manager is a fully web-based availability management tool for Windows NT and Windows 2000 servers. It runs as a service on your Windows server, and the user interface is accessed via a web browser. After the installation and initial configuration process, Availant Manager is ready to monitor key system components and automatically prevent common system failures.
Version 1.0 includes the following specialized agents and utilities:
Availant Manager makes use of standard Windows security protocols. The user installing Availant Manager must have Administrator privileges on the local machine. During the install, that user will automatically be placed in the Availant Manager Administrator local user group, which grants full permission to perform all functions in the program.
After installing, to access Availant Manager on the local machine you must log off and on again to allow Windows to acknowledge your group membership. There is no need to reboot.
To view Availant Manager's user interface you must have Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 or higher on the server running Availant Manager and on all client machines from which you plan to access Availant Manager.
Before installing Availant Manager, you must have the following:
1 WMI is included with Windows 2000. For NT, you can download WMI for free from Microsoft's download site: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/release.asp?ReleaseID=18490.
Important note about installing WMI: It is strongly recommended that you do not install WMI SNMP Provider, as it may conflict with third party SNMP-based products. It is recommended that you choose to install only the default WMI Core Components.
2 If Windows Installer service is not present, the Availant Manager install program will automatically install it. NOTE: Windows Installer will reboot the system before continuing the install, and you will not have an opportunity to stop the reboot.
3 A successful installation requires that your system drive have at least 15 MB free disk space. (This is standard for Windows Installer.)
One of Availant Manager's options for responding to events is automatic e-mail notification. In order to use this feature, you must install Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) support via either Microsoft Exchange Server or Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS).
- Microsoft Exchange Server or
- Microsoft IIS 4.0 or higher (installed with Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack; select the option for SMTP)
- Microsoft Exchange Server or
- Microsoft IIS 5.0 or higher (installed automatically with Windows 2000; select the option for SMTP)
The following notes describing standard product behavior and functionality may be useful as you install and begin using Availant Manager:
Availant Manager sends SNMP traps for events
Availant Manager translates event messages into SNMP traps. These traps can be forwarded to third-party SNMP-based systems management consoles, using standard Windows SNMP configuration procedures.
To configure your console to receive SNMP traps, you will need to integrate the Availant Manager Management Information Base (MIB). The MIBs for SNMP version 1 and SNMP version 2 are stored in the folder C:\Program Files\Availant\Active Manager\Snmp.
The SNMP traps indicate only that an event was detected by Availant Manager, and which agent generated the message. You can then consult the Availant Manager Activity Log for further details.
Initial poll intervals occasionally inhibit rule actions
Most rules have a parameter or a hidden default value for "initial wait" time, the time to wait before the rule begins monitoring. In addition, the time it takes a monitored process to start and stabilize can vary.
Though it's important that a rule doesn't begin monitoring before a process is stabilized, be aware that if an event occurs after you save the rule but before these time periods have elapsed, the rule will not detect it or act on it.
Rule Publisher and Rule Reporter security restrictions
The Rule Publisher utility allows you to copy configured rules to other servers. For security reasons, rules cannot be published (copied) from one remote server to another remote server. You must be logged into and have the browser pointing to the local machine when publishing rules, i.e. publishing can only occur from the local machine to other machines. Likewise, to generate a report with the Rule Reporter, you must have the browser pointing to the local machine.
In addition, you must have administrator permissions on all specified machines in order to publish rules or generate a rule report across servers.
Rules will not act on services that have dependent services
For CPU use and memory use rules, you can specify a service to act on. If you specify a service that has dependent services, the action will not occur. An "action failed" entry will appear in the Activity Log.
Network connectivity rules do not resignal if repair action doesn't succeed
The network loss rules respond to the loss of formerly intact connectivity. If a repair action occurs as directed but does not restore connectivity, connectivity remains lost, and therefore no further action will be taken.
Check the Activity Log regularly so you are aware when network repair actions have failed to restore connectivity, so you can respond to the problem.
Multiple Network Adapter Support
When setting up Network Connectivity Agent rules you specify one or more remote machines to ping. However, if your server contains multiple network adapters you cannot specifically identify machines on one adapter or another. The machine names or IP addresses you enter will route through the adapter that is best suited to handle the request.
Rule display order can change
As you add and then later edit rules on the Goal page, you may find the current rule list displayed in an unexpected order. The rule most recently added or the rule most recently edited always moves to the bottom of the list. This has no effect on their behavior.
In the case of the three-step sequence of the Network Repair rules, it is recommended that you add them in sequence, and that you edit each one before adding the next one. This keeps the visual display in the expected numerical order.
Custom Scripts
You can attach a custom script to be performed when certain problems occur on your server. You must be aware of the following restrictions before using this feature:
- The script file must be a valid Windows Scripting Host script.
- The file must be either a VBScript ending in the ".vbs" extension, or a JavaScript ending in the ".js" extension.
- The script must run properly within the Windows Scripting Host "cscript" command, for example:
cscript somescript.vbsThe script should not perform any operation which blocks execution for longer than 10 minutes. The script should not ask the user for input. Because of these restrictions, calls to "Wscript.Echo" will not prompt the user with a message box. It is your responsibility to validate that your scripts perform properly when attached to Availant Manager custom script rules.
The following are known issues that may affect your use of Availant Manager.
Disk Capacity Agent Issues
"Correct disk full" rules allow invalid delimiters
When specifying a list of files to delete, you must separate the list items with a semicolon (;) or a comma (,). If any other characters are inserted, the rule will not delete the files.
However, Availant Manager allows you to proceed with rule configuration even with invalid characters. No warning is presented. Therefore, be careful to use only the two legal delimiter characters when specifying multiple files to delete.
Full or relative pathnames are not supported for "files to delete" parameter
When specifying files (or file filters) to be deleted, specify only the filename (or wildcard), not the path. The path can be specified by the "Folder to delete from" parameter.
Miscellaneous Issues
Altering system clock affects rule behavior
Moving your system clock forward or backward may affect the polling or resignalling behavior of configured rules. To avoid unexpected rule behavior, stop and restart the Availant Manager service after making any changes to the system clock.
Avoid using the browser's back, forward, and refresh buttons
For best results, navigate via the program's internal menus and links, and not the browser controls.
The browser refresh button will take you back to the Home Page. If you click the browser's refresh button while editing rules, you will lose any unsaved changes. To refresh the Activity Log display, use the log's refresh button.
Lost network connection with domain controller requires user reauthentication
If you are logged in as a domain user and the local machine loses its network connection to the domain controller, you may lose your user authentication. You will be unable to access any page of the Availant Manager interface, and prompted to log on again on each page.
If this happens, log off and back on to Windows to restore your user identity and allow you to continue accessing Availant Manager.