Information regarding System Health: Package Server Health
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Information regarding System Health: Package Server Health

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Article ID: 382014

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Updated On:

Products

IT Management Suite

Issue/Introduction

With ITMS 8.7.3 Release, the following was introduced:

Package Server Health
Administrators can now see the amount of disk usage and free disk space on each package server within the ITMS console. Previously, this functionality was only available by remotely logging in to each package server to view such information.

Environment

ITMS 8.7.3

Cause

The following improvements were added in order to report "Disk Usage(GB)" and "Free Space(GB)" information. 

  • Package Server now send additional section "PSInformation" with attributes containing information about Package Server. Example:
    <PSInformation UNC="true" HTTP="true" HTTPS="true" diskSizeMB="243571" diskSizeUsedByPSMB="646" freeSpaceMB="61285"/>
  • Information is send always when "summary" type event is sent.
  • Introduced two new registry entries "Disk Free Space Alert Critical (MBytes)" and "Disk Free Space Alert Warning (MBytes)". Based on those values Symantec Management Agent UI will show alerts regarding free disk space situation. One for warning second one for critical. The "critical" value could be 0 (zero), in that case the PackageDelivery analogue value is taken into use. The "situation resolved" event is shown if any of error/critical alerts were present and situation is resolved.

Resolution

With our ITMS 8.7.3 release, some improvements were added regarding our Package Servers Health Status.

The managed system now reports "Disk Usage (GB)" and "Free Space (GB)" information through several improvements:

  1. PSInformation Section:
  • Package Servers (PS) now include an additional "PSInformation" section in their reports.
  • This section contains attributes providing details about the Package Server, such as:
    • UNC, HTTP, and HTTPS status
    • diskSizeMB (total disk size in MB)
    • diskSizeUsedByPSMB (disk space used by the PS in MB)
    • freeSpaceMB (free disk space in MB)
  • Example: <PSInformation UNC="true" HTTP="true" HTTPS="true" diskSizeMB="243571" diskSizeUsedByPSMB="646" freeSpaceMB="61285"/>
  1. Data Transmission:
  • This information is transmitted whenever a "summary" type event is sent.
  • Summary events are triggered in the following scenarios:
    • When a new package arrives.
    • When an existing package's content or size changes.
    • When a user manually initiates package validation.
    • When the PS policy changes in a way that prompts package recalculation or revalidation.
    • When the "Resend all statuses" command is executed.
  1. Alerting and Thresholds:
  • Two new registry entries have been introduced:
    • "Disk Free Space Alert Critical (MBytes)"
    • "Disk Free Space Alert Warning (MBytes)"
  • Based on these values, the Symantec Management Agent UI will display alerts for critical or warning levels of free disk space.
  • If the "critical" value is set to 0, the corresponding PackageDelivery analogue value will be used.
  • A "situation resolved" event is displayed once any active error or critical alerts are no longer present.
  1. Message Sending Frequency:
  • Messages from the Package Server are sent when:
    • The "batch" amount is reached (default: 1000 events, configurable via "MaxPackageEventsPerMessage" registry entry).
    • The sending interval has passed (default: 1 hour, configurable via "MessageFlushInterval (min)" registry entry).
  1. Potential Delays:

    Delays in reflecting this information could be due to:
  • NSE processing on the server.
  • Infrequent changes or additions of packages on the Package Server.
  1. Intended Purpose:

This functionality is designed to provide administrators with key information regarding the health of each package server, rather than serving as a real-time "monitor" of its operational state.

 

 

These are the different areas where those improvements were introduced:

  1. Overview page of Site Server management changed to include some PS stats about space usage.
    Example



  2. We show "Disk Usage(GB)" and "Free Space(GB)" information on Site Server Management page.
    Example



    If you click one of your Package Servers on Site Server Management page, then there will be additional information what servicing protocols (Codebases) are enabled on this Package Server and also same "Disk Usage(GB)" and "Free Space(GB)" information.



  3. On the Symantec Management Agent (Altiris Agent), a new alert appears for low disk space:

    "Package Server is experiencing a critical shortage of available disk space"



  4. A new Automation Policy is available that can be used to be alerted when there is a low disk space on your Package Servers. It can be enabled to receive emails about Package Servers where free space is lower than 10gb.
    Note:
    You can change the default value instead of default 10 (GB), then Package Server(s) will be shown with warning message about low free space on Site Server Management page, according to your custom value.
    There is a core setting that you can use to control how much free space you want to monitor (in GB):
    • core setting added: PsMinFreeSpaceGB (default is '10')
    • if storage free space is lower than that, warning will be shown in NS Console at particular Package Server UI
    See Updating Core Settings in ITMS 8.5 and later for steps in how to make changes to core settings.



 

 

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