Not receiving Heartbeat alert as expected

Products

• Server Management Suite
• IT Management Suite

Issue/Introduction

After shutting down a machine which has the Monitor Agent plug-in installed, no Heartbeat alert was generated.

How does the Heartbeat architecture work?

 

Environment

ITMS 8.x

Monitor Solution for Servers 8.x

Resolution

The following is a workflow of how the Heartbeat architecture within Monitor Solution:

1. Monitor Agent sends a Heartbeat, via proprietary HTTP request, to the Monitor Solution (AeXMonitor) web service. A Heartbeat HTTP post will be sent at a frequency specified within the Monitor Agent configuration policy (default is every 15 minutes)
    
2. The Monitor Solution web service receives the Heartbeat from the resource as represented by its GUID, along with timestamp and interval values, and updates its records for each resource in the dbo.MonitorHeartBeats table in the CMDB
    
3. The Monitor Solution web service checks for a status of received Heartbeats at a frequency specified in the Monitor Solution Server Settings (default is every 60 seconds). If a Heartbeat has not been received for a resource at the expected interval, a Heartbeat alert will be raised in the Event Console

Note:  If either the Altiris Monitor Agent service or the machine is gracefully shut down, a notification is sent to the Monitor Solution web service, prior to the shut down, stating that the resource is being intentionally brought offline. This prevents a Heartbeat alert from being raised. The Heartbeat architecture is only meant to raise an alert in the event of an unexpected interruption in communication between the Monitor Agent and the Monitor Solution web service. A Heartbeat alert will be raised under the following scenarios:  The Monitor Agent service terminates unexpectedly, the machine loses network connectivity to the Symantec Management Platform server, or the machine becomes offline / shut down unexpectedly.