Director 4.11 agent spontaneous reboots 1

[MaxAndersen]

I got an xSeries 250, w2k server and Director agent 4.1 which spontaneously reboots. With the 3.1.1 agent, there was an ibm automatic server restart service, which could be disabled to avoid this behavior. What can I do with the 4.1 agent to stop this behaviour??
Also some of our 4.1 agents runs extremely high cpu usage, most have been upgraded with update express and windows drivers. Any recommendations - fixes, drivers etc.
FYI: We only use the agents and Tivoli Framework, so no Director server.

/Max

 

[Stiddy]

Well, its nice to know that I am not the only one with this problem. I primarily also run X250 servers. Here is what I know. I have many X250's running W2k3 server on RAID 5's. I can have an older version of director agent and then upgrade to 4.11 without doing any BIOS and firware updates and the server will go into the constant reboot process. GREAT, got to rebuild again.

Given the same situation, run the latest servRAID cdrom to update the servRAID controller and BIOS. Then run the latest UpdatExpress cdrom to update everything else. Upgrade the agent to 4.11. YEAH, all is well. But the problem is that I have servers all around the globe. Can't really send cdroms everywhere.

Next situation. We have a director server up and running, dont know why u dont (Its free and well worth it, buy the way i am also the tivoli admin), and driector is suppose to be able through software distribution to update the BIOS and firware as well as windows drivers, and reboot if needed. This works for me about 50% of the time and then I able to upgrade the agent.

So finally, I downloaded the Update Express Web server, its also free, and imported everything a X250, 7100, and 5500 server neededs to update the BIOS and other junk. This is a nice software but if u dont patch the systems in the perfect order, then the machine goes into your favorite reboot routine. I am able 75-80% successful in this venture.

Bottom line is that I wish I could help you more but I having the same problem. I just finished taking a week long class for director and of course I could not duplicate the problem in class. Please keep me informed as 2 what u learn or have learned.

HTH - Stiddy

 

[MaxAndersen]

Thanks for you reply - there's a lot of useful informations.
I've had some suspicions regarding the RAID5 controller, because I don't have the problem in servers using the integrated RAID controller. Found an article somewhere stating the need to upgrade BIOS and drivers for RAID and system management controller, to avoid some of theese problems. I'll try to make sure, that the drivers and BIOS are upgraded, and see what happens.
Regarding the Director server. We have a big framework installation, where we also have our own system management system, which uses the framework to do most of the work with boots, service windows, inventory etc. So we only use the director agent to get HW alerts. True it would be nice to use it for updating bios and drivers, collecting performance data etc., but we also have HP hardware, so then we get in a situation, where either we have to buy director licenses for non IBM hw, or use yet another program to administrate the HP HW. So that is the reason at the moment. It might change, but for now we'll keep it "simple".
I'll keep you updated with the results.

/Max