automated_deployment_engine failed to start during and after upgrade

Products

• DX Unified Infrastructure Management (Nimsoft / UIM)

Issue/Introduction

During upgrade to 23.4 GA the automated_deployment_engine ADE would not start. Log data showed that it was enumerating packages, and then failed with a null pointer error. The UIM archive contained many customized packages and probes. In order to complete the upgrade process, it was necessary to:

• allow the upgrade installation to fail
• login to IM
• deactivate the distsrv probe
• rename the C:\Program Files (x86)\Nimsoft\archive directory
• activate the distsrv probe
• initiate the upgrade installation

After the upgrade completed the automated_deployment_engine and distsrv probe were stopped, and the new archive directory was renamed and the old archive directory was put back in place, but the automated_deployment_engine failed to start. Copying in just the old packages in bulk also did not work.

Environment

• UIM 23.4
• automated_deployment_engine 23.4
• distsrv 23.4

Resolution

Since the end goal was to upgrade to 23.4 CU4, the CU4 upgrade was performed after putting the fresh archive back in place and then the process below was performed to get the old archive packages imported back into the archive post upgrade.

To work around this issue, the following was performed:

• deactivate distsrv
• make a backup copy of the new archive folder
• copy in a portion of the old archive packages to the current archive folder (25-30%)
• activate distsrv
• activate automated_deployment_engine (verify it does not crash)

In this specific case the automated_deployment_engine started without issue. The remainder of the packages were copied back into the current C:\Program Files (x86)\Nimsoft\archive using the above method to get all packages back into the archive.