HP Availability Manager - Version 2.6 Release Notes The following notes address late-breaking information and known problems for the HP Availability Manager Version 2.6. These notes fall into the following categories: o Installation note o New and changed features o Problems corrected o Operation notes o Display notes 1 Installation Notes The notes in this section are related to the preinstallation and installation of the Availability Manager software. 1.1 Uninstall Prior Versions Before Installing the New Kit On both Windows and OpenVMS systems, check the following list to see if any item applies to you. If so, follow the instructions in the appropriate section before installing Version 2.6: o On Windows systems, you must first uninstall Versions 2.3 and lower. On Versions 2.4, 2.4-1, and 2.5, you can install this kit over the old kits. o On OpenVMS systems, perform one of the following steps: - If you have never installed the Availability Manager on your system, you can install Version 2.6 directly. - If you have installed a version of the Availability Manager prior to Version 2.4 and you are running OpenVMS Version 6.2 through Version 7.3-1 or its variants, you must perform the following steps: a. Uninstall the previous version of the Availability Manager. b. Install the Availability Manager Data Collector Version 2.4 kit. 1 c. Install the Version 2.6 kit. - If you have installed a version of the Availability Manager prior to Version 2.4 and you are running OpenVMS Version 7.3 or higher, you must perform the following steps: a. Uninstall the previous version of the Availability Manager. b. Install the Version 2.6 kit. These requirements are explained in the Version 2.6 installation instructions. 1.2 Installing from an ODS-5 Disk If you install the Version 2.5 kit from an ODS-5 disk, the file name for the kit must be in all-capital letters for the kit to be installed correctly. 1.3 Copy Your AVAILMAN.INI File Prior to installation, you might want to make a copy of your AVAILMAN.INI file to save your customizations such as the groups you usually monitor. On Windows systems, also delete any desktop shortcuts for previous versions of the Availability Manager because they will be invalid with the new version. 2 New and Changed Features The following sections discuss new and changed features introduced in Version 2.6 of the Availability Manager. 2.1 System Overview Window Has a New Look and Feel The DECamds System Overview window format has been very popular and useful in the past. In this release of the Availability Manager, the System Overview window has been redesigned to match this format. This format allows you to view nodes in multiple groups at the same time. 2 2.2 New Group Displays In addition to the redesigned System Overview window, this version of the Availability Manager has two new windows to help you monitor sites with many groups and nodes: o Group Overview window-allows you to view all your groups in one window at the same time as you view particular nodes in the System Overview window. o Single-Group window-allows you to view the nodes in a single group. This feature enables you to view two or more groups that are not adjacent to each other in the Group/Node pane. 2.3 New Single-Process Displays The DECamds Single Process window has been very popular and useful in the past. In this release of the Availability Manager, there are two new views of the Single Process window: o Vertical grid-displays all the single process data pages in one vertical display. o Horizontal grid-displays all the single process data pages in one horizontal display. 2.4 Support for OpenVMS Version 8.3 This version of the Availability Manager supports monitoring of OpenVMS Version 8.3 nodes, including Alpha and I64 systems. 2.5 64-CPU Support The data collections that involve collecting data from the CPU databases (Node Summary and CPU Modes) have been updated to report data on up to and including 64 CPUs. 2.6 CPU Flags Shown for Alpha and I64 Several new flags have been added to the "Capabilities and CPU Flags" column in the CPU Modes view, CPU page, and Group/Node pane. The new flags and the systems to which they apply are in the following table: 3 ___________________________________________________________ Flag Meaning ___________________________________________________________ IDLE (Alpha and The CPU is idle and is waiting for OpenVMS I64) to schedule work to it. LCKMGR (Alpha This is the Dedicated Lock Manager CPU. and I64) FASTPATH_CPU This CPU has Fastpath affinity and can (Alpha and I64) service Fastpath interrupts. FASTPATH_PORTS Fastpath ports are associated with this (Alpha and I64) CPU. LOW_POWER (I64) The CPU is idle and is in low power mode. COTHREAD_OF_nn For processors that are multithread (I64) capable, each thread in a core is represented as a CPU in OpenVMS. For a particular CPU, flag indicates the CPU number of the other thread that shares this core. ___________________________________________________________ 2.7 Events Added The following events have been added: o HIPINT: High interrupt mode time on Primary CPU o HPMPSN: High MP synchronizaton mode time on Primary CPU These events set thresholds for interrupt and MP synchronization mode time. The Primary CPU on OpenVMS has several tasks assigned to it, such as updating the system clock. If the system overhead on this CPU approaches 100%, performance problems might result such as degradation in I/O and lock manager performance. 3 Problems Corrected The following sections discuss problems that have been corrected in Version 2.6 of the Availability Manager. 3.1 Counting of COMO Processes for 64-bit Processors Corrected The accounting for the number of COMO processes in the Node Summary data collection was incorrect and was usually underreported. This problem has been corrected. 4 3.2 Disk Status and Disk Volume Filtering Corrected Several filter options in the Disk Status and Disk Volume Filtering did not work. For instance, in the Disk Status page, the offline checkbox might not be checked, but nevertheless the offline disks were listed. Other checkboxes also did not operate correctly. In the Disk Volume page, the RAMdisks checkbox did not detect all RAMdisks, and the Exclude Devices list did not work correctly. All of these problems have been corrected. 3.3 Disk Free Space Reported Stale Values The disk free space in the Volume Summary view, Disk tab, Node Summary page at times reported a stale value for a disk in an OpenVMS Cluster. This problem has been corrected. Note, however, that the free space is stored on the node that masters the disk's resources. To obtain an accurate reading of the disk free space for a disk in an OpenVMS Cluster, check the "Collect" checkbox for disk volume in the Data Collection customization at the Group level. This enables background data collection for disk volume data over the cluster. 3.4 Single Process Window Fixes The following fixes have been made for the collection of single process data: o Data collection for the Single Process window intermittently stopped after a few seconds. This problem has been corrected. o With the Version 2.5B changes in the Data Collector, the data collection for the image name did not operate correctly, and various fixes did not work either. All of these problems have been corrected. 3.5 Bad Memory Page Collection Fixed On I64 systems, the data collection to gather the bad memory pages on the system operated incorrectly. This problem has been corrected. 5 3.6 Alignment Faults for SYS$RMDRIVER (Alpha and I64) Many alignment faults generated by SYS$RMDRIVER have been eliminated. Work continues to eliminate these faults altogether and is expected to be completed in a future release. 3.7 Large Memory Values Now Reported in Gigabytes For large memory machines in the multigigabyte range, memory values are now reported in gigabytes. 3.8 Default System Thresholds Changed The thresholds in the following table have been changed to reflect the increase performance of machines in general: ___________________________________________________________ Threshold Old Value New Value ___________________________________________________________ HIBIOR 20 200 HIDIOR 10 200 HIHRDP 2 50 HIPWIO 10 50 HISYSP 15 25 HITTLP 20 400 PRBIOR 40 100 PRDIOR 15 60 PRPGFL 20 200 PRPIOR 2 40 ___________________________________________________________ 3.9 CPU Qs Column Documentation and Tooltip Changes This column is the total of COM, COMO, MWAIT, COLPG, PFW and FPG states. (COM and COMO have always been included.) The tooltips for this column in several displays and the documentation have been updated. (DECamds documentation has remained the same.) 6 4 Operation Notes/Restrictions The following sections contain notes pertaining to the operation of the Availability Manager Version 2.6, including restrictions on operation. 4.1 Running Reflective Memory by GE Fanuc and Availability Manager The Reflective Memory product by GE Fanuc sets up the device RMA0: as part of its normal operation. Because the Availability Manager Data Collector also creates the device RMA0:, both products cannot run on the same node at the same time. 4.2 Administrator Account Required to Run the Availability Manager On Windows 2000 and Windows XP platforms, the Data Analyzer must be run from an account in the Administrator group. This restriction will be removed in a future release of the Availability Manager. 4.3 Problem Displaying Large Numbers of Processes or Disks Very busy networks can sometimes interfere with the transfer of data between the Data Analyzer and the Data Collector. This problem is noticeable when you display large numbers of disks or processes. The number of disks or processes might change temporarily because of a lost data message. This problem will be corrected in a future release. 4.4 Local Administrator Account Required for Windows Installation To install the Availability Manager on a Windows system, you must use the local Administrator account. Some users have had problems when they use a Windows domain account that has Administrator privileges instead. For example, a failure message might appear saying "Failure to install AMNDIS50" after most of the installation is complete. This problem will be corrected in a future release. 7 5 Display Notes The following sections contain notes pertaining to the display of Data Analyzer data on all platforms and on OpenVMS systems. 5.1 Problems Using the Data Analyzer on All Platforms The following sections contain notes about the display of the Data Analyzer on Windows and OpenVMS platforms in Version 2.5. 5.1.1 Events Sometimes Displayed After Background Collection Stops The Data Analyzer sometimes displays events after users customize their systems to stop collecting a particular kind of data. This is most likely to occur when the Data Analyzer is monitoring many nodes. Under these conditions, a data handler sometimes clears events before all pending packets have been processed. The events based on the data in these packets are displayed even though users have requested that this data not be collected. 5.1.2 Truncated LAN Channel Summary Display On versions of OpenVMS prior to Version 7.3-1, the LAN Channel Summary display might be disabled for some OpenVMS nodes if there are more than seven channels for that virtual circuit. This problem results from a restriction in the OpenVMS Version 7.3 PEDRIVER. For this condition, the following error message is displayed: Error retrieving ChSumLAN data, error code=0x85 (Continuation data disallowed for request) This problem was corrected in the OpenVMS Version 7.3-1 PEDRIVER. 5.2 Problem Using the Data Analyzer on OpenVMS Systems: Long Runs Exhaust XLIB Resource ID On older versions of DECwindows Motif, a resource ID allocation scheme works poorly with the Motif support in Java for OpenVMS. As a result, long-running Availability Manager sessions might stop updating the display at a time that depends on the speed of the OpenVMS machine. For example, a session running on a dual-processor 275 MHz system reported the following after 14 hours: 8 Xlib: resource ID allocation space exhausted! On faster machines, this message was reported after only 8 hours. This problem appears to have been corrected in DECwindows Motif Version 1.3-1. 9