Smarts SAM 9.1/9.2: Slow initial broker/domain connection time seen in WebConsole and Business Dashboard after upgrading from earlier Smarts SAM version

Products

• VMware Smart Assurance

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:




After upgrading to Smarts Service Assurance Manager (Smarts SAM) 9.1 or 9.2, the initial connection of Smarts SAM Business Dashboard or Smarts SAM Web Console to the Smarts broker and domains is slow

Environment

VMware Smart Assurance - SMARTS

Cause

The above issue has been found to occur when there is a lack of Entropy on the system. Entropy is required by the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol used by Smarts 9.1 and later applications, and a lack of Entropy in the system will cause a delay in establishing a TLS session, resulting in a slow broker/domain connection. Smarts Foundation software started using the industry standard TLS protocol as the inter-process communication protocol for EMC Smarts applications. TLS replaces the Smarts proprietary IPC protocol in Smarts 9.1 and later.

Resolution

If you encounter this issue, you can do either of the following:

• Disable TLS
• Set the java "egd" parameter on the system where the browser runs

The following sections explain the requirements, considerations, and steps for each of these options. 

Disabling TLS
Disabling TLS should be done in accordance with the local network security policies. Disabling TLS can be done as follows:

1. On the machine where the Smarts tomcat server is started, open the webconsole.properties file in the following directory: 
   
   <BASEDIR>/smarts/tomcat/webapps/webconsole
   
    
2. Add the following line (or set existing parameter to "true"):
   
   # Flag to disable TLS
   com.smarts.no_tls=true
   
    
3. Save and close the webconsole.properties file.
4. Restart tomcat after this change is made.
    

Setting the java "egd" parameter on the system where the browser runs
Setting the "java.security.egd" parameter must be done on every Linux/Solaris machine where connection slowness is observed in the browser. There are a few ways to do this, but updating the java.security file in the JRE/JDK should resolve the issue. This is done as follows: 

1. On the Linux/Solaris machine where connection slowness is observed, open the java.security file in the following location:
    
   <JDK/JRE>/lib/security/java.security
    
    
2. Find the following line:
   
   securerandom.source=file:/dev/urandom
   
    
3. Change the above line to the following:
   
   securerandom.source=file:/dev/./urandom
   
4. • IMPORTANT! The extra "./" in the above file path is required. Without it, the "file:/dev/urandom" path is sometimes mapped back to "file:/dev/random" (see http://bugs.sun.com/view_bug.do;?bug_id=6521844).
     
      
5. Save and close the java.security file.