Smarts: How to interpret the output from brcontrol including status (Running, Dead, Unknown) What is the difference between a running, dead or unknown interface?

Products

• VMware Smart Assurance

Environment

VMware Smart Assurance - SMARTS

Resolution

When a Manager starts it registers with the broker. The broker maintains information on these managers in its registry.   The broker registry can be viewed by running ./brcontrol from BASEDIR/smarts/bin. If the Broker resides on another system, specify the -b option with the host and port number.  BASEDIR/smarts/bin/brcontrol [-b <host>:<port>]

The Broker registry maintains the following information:

1. Name of the Manager, including the host and TCP port it is running on

2.Status of each Manager. The Broker checks the status of each Manager every five minutes by connecting to the host on which EMC Smarts is running and determining if the process is running properly.

  Running indicates that the Broker is able to communicate with the Manager.
  Dead indicates that the Manager exited unexpectedly or is unreachable. When a Manager properly shuts down, it notifies the Broker and the Broker removes it from its registry. The Broker continues to try to connect to the Manager every five minutes. If the Broker succeeds in connecting to the Manager, it changes its status back to Running.
  Unknown indicates that the Broker was restarted and that it is querying its list of Managers to determine their state.
 

3. Process ID of each Manager. This is the process ID assigned by the host s operating
system. In some cases when the Broker is restarted, the process ID of each Manager is
set to zero to indicate the Broker does not know the process ID of the Manager.

4. Last time the state of the Manager changed. This value is set when the Manager
registers with the Broker and is updated if the Broker determines that the Manager is
dead. When the Broker restarts, it changes the status of Managers marked Unknown
to Running or Dead.