Smarts SAM: How long do notifications remain in WAS_ACTIVE state in Presentation SAM before clearing, after underlying SAM is disconnected?

Products

• VMware Smart Assurance

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:


How long do Smarts SAM notifications remain in WAS_ACTIVE state in Presentation SAM before clearing, after underlying SAM is disconnected?

Time taken for notifications in WAS_ACTIVE state to clear is inconsistent.

Environment

VMware Smart Assurance - SMARTS

Cause

A notification can be WAS_ACTIVE state when a SAM server disconnects from the underlying domain that is the event source, or when a Presentation SAM disconnects from its underlying aggregation SAM. In this case, all active notifications from the disconnected, underlying SAM domains are marked WAS_ACTIVE.

Resolution

How long a notification remains in WAS_ACTIVE is based on a number of metrics and an underlying algorithm. WAS_ACTIVE notifications remain in this state until the attachTime has elapsed. The default value of attachTime is 6000 seconds (100 minutes). However, the actual value that is used to calculate when to clear the notifications is determined as follows:

When the uptime for the underlying domain is greater than the attachTime, then the value is 240 seconds plus the smoothing interval. The 'attachTime' determines the delay before reconnected but un-renotified WAS_ACTIVE Notifs are auto-cleared.

Default = 6000.

There are also two hard coded parameters to be considered:

• attachFlappingTime (1200)
• attachTimeShort (900 )

Depending on what type of disconnect occurs, one or the other of these parameters will be added to your configured attach time plus the smoothing interval.

When the uptime for the underlying servers is less than the attachTime, the value is attachTime minus uptime plus the smoothing interval. Therefore, about the best you can achieve by the configuration above is a WAS_ACTIVE auto-clear time of about 20+ minutes. 

Since the move to xml config, attachTime is defined as below in the ics-config.dtd ( /conf/ics/ics-config.dtd )

<!ELEMENT domaintype (description?, hook?, domainname*,

update?)>

<!ATTLIST domaintype

name CDATA #REQUIRED

dxaConfFile CDATA #REQUIRED

MinimumCertainty CDATA #REQUIRED

SmoothingInterval CDATA #REQUIRED

attachTime CDATA #IMPLIED

detachTime CDATA #IMPLIED

timeOut CDATA #IMPLIED

timeOutBE CDATA #IMPLIED

timeOutFE CDATA #IMPLIED

enable (TRUE " FALSE " true " false " True

" False) "FALSE"

timestamp CDATA "0"

>

These values cannot be edited here, but can be added to the <domainType> section of the domain type xml file of interest. (see Example below). You can confirm a change to this configuration, by checking the  'attachTime' attribute of the InChargeDomain (SAM) of interest in the Topology Browser module.

Example of the syntax of a change to ics-default.xml

<ics_config version="2">

<domainconfig>

<domaintype

name="INCHARGE-AM-SUITE"

dxaConfFile="dxa-conn.conf"

MinimumCertainty="0.01"

SmoothingInterval="65"

attachTime="XXXX"

detachTime="XXXX">

<description>Type for INCHARGE-AM-SUITE</description>

<hook enable="False">ics/dxa-sample-hook.asl</hook>

<domainname>INCHARGE-AM</domainname>

<domainname>NCM</domainname>

<domainname>INCHARGE-AM2</domainname>

</domaintype>