How To disable Alert Manager synchronization and the AM Hidden ping policy

Products

• Management Platform (Formerly known as Notification Server)

Issue/Introduction

 

Resolution

Question

For large NS 6.x environments, a server performance improvement can be obtained by disabling unused functionality.  The built-in NS Alert Manager service (essentially a light-weight version of Altiris Helpdesk solution) is responsible for replicating asset, user, and incident data between the NS "Altiris" database and the Alert Manager/Helpdesk database "Altiris_Incidents".  

The current method of synchronization implements multiple read requests (with locking) against the NS database to compare data.  In small to medium sized environments, this operation completes rapidly, and has little impact on server performance.  

Relevant environments: Very large environments, environments with insufficient SQL server hardware,  and or irregular NS configurations. 

Answer
It can be desirable to disable both the data synchronization, and the forced always-on state of the IIS worker process for Alert Manager.  There are three tasks to accomplish this.  This technique should not be used in environments that actively use the Incidents tab (Alert Manager or Helpdesk) on the same NS

Disabling Alert Manager synchronization (part 1 - Auto Update Processing)

DisableAutoUpdateProcessing stops sending asset and user data from the NS database to the Alert Manager database.

1. From the NS console > Configuration Tab > Server Settings > Notification Server Settings > Incident Settings
2. Uncheck "Synchronize resource and incident data with the Notification Server."
3. Click Apply
   
   Note: This is the most reliable method of disabling synchronization, as the NS console may not reflect the current registry setting.  Clicking apply on the Incident configuration page will overwrite the registry setting with the console setting.

 

Disabling Alert Manager synchronization (part 2 - Sync Incident Processing )

DisableSyncIncidentProcessing stops sending incident data from the Altert Manager database to the NS database.
Ensure the following two REG_SZ entries exist, and are set to true:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Altiris\eXpress\Helpdesk Package\ DisableAutoUpdateProcessing   = true     (should already exist, and be set to true from prior step) DisableSyncIncidentProcessing = true     (must be created)

Disabling the Alert Manager web ping policy (part 3)

By default, a background process makes a web request to the Alert Manager webservice.  This ensures that the related IIS worker process stays resident.  By removing the web ping policy, the webservice will only load on demand, and will automatically unload after being idle for 15 minutes.  Execute the attached NScript (DisablePingAMPolicy.cs)  to disable the web ping policy. 

To execute the NScript:

1. Copy the script to the \Program Files\Altiris\Notification Server\bin directory
2. Execute the following command from a DOS windows (using the working directory from above):   
   nscript.exe DisablePingAMPolicy.cs

If successfully removed, the Windows scheduled task "NS.Hidden Ping AM Web.{6326e19e-733b-4c23-abae-031c3a294a5a}" which normally executes every 5 minutes will no longer exist.

Note: To re-enable the web ping policy, execute the other attached NScript "EnablePingAMPolicy.cs"