# HP OpenView Service Desk

## version 4.5
OpenView Operations for Windows 7.5 cluster Integration

October 2005

© Copyright 2005 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.

## Content:

Last-minute information
Introduction
Getting Started
Known errors and limitations
Trouble shooting

## LAST-MINUTE INFORMATION

There is no last-minute information.

## INTRODUCTION

OVOW 7.5 is the first release of OVO to support installation and operation of the Management Server in a failover configuration running a Microsoft Windows 2003 Cluster.

From service pack 16 Service Desk starts to support integration of OVOW (OpenView Operations for Windows) 7.5 cluster and OVSD (OpenView Service Desk) 4.5. The document is an addendum to OpenView Operations Integration Administrator's Guide which provides additional information about how to setup the integration.

The document assumes that you are an experienced OVOW administrator and you understand OVOW cluster concepts and terminology.

## GETTING STARTED

### Integration Model

OVOW forwards messages to OVSD as Incident by using an integration account (OVW_xxx) of OVSD, then OVSD sends back Annotation/Acknowledge actions to OVOW. Since OVSD can not execute these actions on OVOW directly, it dispatches these actions to OVSD Agent (hosted on OVOW side) to exeucte them. OVSD Server locates the OVSD Agent according the Host field of OVW_xxx.

OVOW cluster acts as a virtual server and has a unique IP Address/Network Name (say ovow_ip_address). The virtual server runs on one cluster node at any time, on which the ovow_ip_address is bound. If failover occurs, the virtual server switchs to another node, ovow_ip_address transfers as well. Therefore, by running an OVSD Agent on each cluster node and setting OVW_xxx's Host to ovow_ip_address, OVSD Server can always find the "active" OVSD Agent through ovow_ip_address. In that way, actions can be sent to OVOW no matter when or how failover occurs.

Addtionally, OVSD Agents (running on each node) broadcast a kind of "alive" message (contains ovow_ip_address) periodically. Every time OVSD Server gets the message, it resends failed action(s) (if any) belong to that address.

### Setup steps

Basic steps can be found in OpenView Operations Integration Administrator's Guide, here are additional steps you must perform when integrating OVSD with an OVOW cluster.

1. Get ovow_ip_address, you can find it on the Windows Cluster Administrator console, it resident in the Parameters tab page of OvOW IP Address or OvOW Network Name entry.

2. After installing OVSD Agent, modify %SD_AGENTHOME%\bin\installagentservice.bat and place "/CLUSTERNAME=ovow_ip_address" after "-start com.hp.startup.Bootstrap -params com.hp.ifc.ev.ag.sdalocal.AppAgent", then install/reinstall it as a service. If you start OVSD Agent from command line, just append "/CLUSTERNAME= ovow_ip_address" to %SD_AGENTHOME%\bin\sd_agent.bat in command line (here, the double quotation marks are mandatory).

3. For the integration account OVW_xxx in OVSD, specify its Host field as ovow_ip_address.

4. An optional step is to specify a "/INTERFACE=xxx" parameter for OVSD Agent. Since there are usually multi network interfaces on a node in a cluster environment, you can add a "/INTERFACE=one_interface_ipaddress" for Agent to specify which interface is used to send the "alive" messages. Otherwise, the messages will be sent out through every interface. Usually, you can specify one_interface_ipaddress as the node's real address (which must be accessible from OVSD Server).
5. This step is optional. By default, SD-OVOW integration package is installed in the directory C:\OVOSD in OVOW side. A sub directory C:\OVOSD\bin\sd_queue is used as queue repository by the queuing tools. However in a clustered environment, queue in one node will be not accessible by another node if this node is down, which may cause information lost during failover. To avoid this:
   a. Copy OVO-W integration files into a shared disk, e.g. V:\OVOSD
   b. Replace string (VPWBinToolsPath = "C:\OVOSD\bin\") by (VPWBinToolsPath = "V:\OVOSD\bin\") in Ovo-Sd.vbs
   c. Replace string "C:\OVOSD\bin\" by "V:\OVOSD\bin\" in all the service desk policies (Forward message changes to Service Desk and Forward messages to Service Desk)
   d. OVSDSync.exe may put some string values "C:\OVOSD\bin" in Windows Registry; there is no need to replace these strings to "V:\OVOSD\bin\".

## KNOWN ERRORS OR LIMITATIONS

### Messages from SD to OVOW may delay during OVOW failover

During OVOW failover, messages (which need to be sent from SD to OVOW) pile up on OVSD side and they will be sent after OVOW failover is finished. A worse but very rare scenario is, if the OVOW failover happens between a message handling process (from OVSD to OVOW), it may cause subsequent messages delay for about 5 minutes even when the OVOW failover finishs in a short time.

### Message loss if active node crash

If active OVOW node crashes while massive messages are being sent from OVSD to OVOW, OVOW can not guarantee all messages will get executed though it can be proved that those messages have arrived.

## TROUBLE SHOOTING

### Can't start OVSD Agent service

Check that environment variable SD_AGENTHOME is set correctly. If not, most probably you have not restarted after installing OVSD Agent as it requires.

If that environment variable is correct, please double check whether there is any error in installagentservice.bat.

### SD Agent can't parse parameter well from command line

If you start OVSD Agent from command line, you must enclose its parameter with double quotation marks if the parameter contains equality sign (=).

### Can't run OVSDSync.exe

The document of OVSDSync.exe tool says you must stop the wmimgmt service, but in a cluster environment you will encounter problem while you doing that, it complains that you could not stop some dependent services. To overcome this problem, you need set all those dependent OVOW services (in Windows Cluster Administrator) to "Do not restart" temporarily. Here is a screenshot:

Those dependent services are:

- OvOW Access Manager
- OvOW AutoDiscovery Server
- OvOW Message Action Server
- OvOW Policy Management and Deployment
- OvOW Prerequisites Check Server
- OvOW Status Engine

(Don't forget to restore the settings after you run OVSDSync successfully.)

Another problem is, by default, OVSDSync tries to connect to a local SQL Server instance, while in a typical cluster environment, the SQL Server usually resident in a virtual address. You need specify this address in OVSDSync.exe.config file:

`<add key="OVSDSYNC.ConnectionString" value="integrated security='true';initial catalog=openview;data source=Address of Virtual SQL Server\OVOPS" />`

The Address of Virtual SQL Server can be found on the Windows Cluster Administrator console:

### Can't send message from OVSD to OVOW.

Check that environment variable SD_OVWHOME is set correctly on OVOW nodes. If not, restart the OS or set it manually to let it point to C:\OVOSD\.

If that environment variable is correct, try to start OVSD Agent with the "/DEBUG" parameter and check the Agent log to see whether the job has been sent to OVSD Agent when the problem is reproduced.

### Can't install Service Desk policy to OVOW

When installing Service Desk policy to OVOW, you may get an error like:

        Ovpmutil cannot be started on inactive cluster node.
        please review the output above to ensure success.

This is because you are trying to install policy on an inactive node. Installing the policy from an active node can solve the problem.