When agent ping fails, how long does CA WA DE wait before marking it down?

Products

• DSERIES- SERVER
• CA Workload Automation DE - System Agent (dSeries)

Issue/Introduction

When an agent fails to respond, the CA WA DE will mark it as INACTIVE or DOWN after a certain amount of time.  The DE has timeout setting that is used when marking an agent as Inactive.

When an agent fails to respond, the CA WA DE will mark it as INACTIVE.  What is the wait time and can it be configured?

Environment

CA Workload Automation DE R12
CA Workload Automation System Agent 11.3 and 11.4

Resolution

The DE has "Maximum agent heartbeat ping wait time (milliseconds)" settings.  The settings defines the timeout for DE when pinging the agent.  If the agent does not respond back within this time period, the manager will mark the agent as Inactive. The default value is 1000 milliseconds (1 second). 

This setting can be increased, however, it is highly recommended to not change this unless there are network issues.  You may increase to 2000-3000 milliseconds (2-3 seconds).  If agents are taking more than 2-3 seconds to respond back then that indicates significant network latency.  This will require Network Administrator to investigate the latency.

Note:  The DE ping to agent is not a regular ICMP ping.  This is a special call made by manager to the agent.

Steps

1. Connect to the server as an administrator using CA WA Desktop Client.
2. Open the Admin perspective.
3. Right-click Topology in the Admin view, and select Open from the pop-up menu.
The Topology view opens.
4. Right-click the server connection in the Topology view, and select Configure Shared Parameters from the pop-up menu.
The Server Shared Parameters view opens.
5. Click the Internal tab
The Internal view opens.
6. Modify the following field in the Internal tab:
 Maximum agent heartbeat ping wait time (milliseconds)
Default: 1000 (milliseconds)
7. Click Save at the top right corner of the Topology view.