Netfinity Director

[forbsy]

Does anyone have any experience with Netfinity Director 3.1(previously Netfinity Manager)? It seems to grab all available CPU, doesn't load properly all the time,etc. If anyone could tell me their expereinces with this app. I'd really appreciate it.

-Forbsy

 

[LarryTheCucumber]

Is this on the Director Server or Client?
What hardware and OS?
I am assuming Windows NT or 2000/XP?
If so what if any events are in the Event logs
We use this product on about 200 units.

 

[forbsy]

This is the Director Server. I'm running Windows 2K SP2 on IBM x330 server (1GB RAM, 1GHz). I'm just curious about other people's experiences with this app. Has it been stable for you?

 

[LarryTheCucumber]

Very stable, but we installed it on an older IBM GL 300 NT W/S withe SQL server runtime. It beats it to death somedays.
Before we installed it we contacted IBM and they informed us this would be best. This also is a way to keep it off the production servers.

That is basiclly all this PC does.

Hope this helps.

 

[forbsy]

Thanx for the info. I have it running on a management server as well, but we use this management server for other things as well. Maybe it would be best if I installed it on a dedicated box.
One more question. For the interconnect network to function properly, do you have to terminate both sides of the interconnect chain? I'm using an Advanced System Network PCI adapter.

 

[LarryTheCucumber]

Look at the IBM Redbooks for Director about setting up the Interconnect network. There are more details than I can cover here.

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/pubs/pdfs/redbooks/sg246188.pdf

This is the Director PDF. We use this almost every day to tweak our Director systems(as time permits).

 

[LarryTheCucumber]

See also this DOC it has the Diagrams

http://www.pc.ibm.com/qtechinfo/MIGR-40439.html?lang=en_US&brand=root&doctype=&subtype=Cat&up=none

 

[forbsy]

Thanx for all the documentation. When I installed IBM Director 3.1 and launched the console, in the right panel under tasks I'm missing the Advanced System Management task. The server that I'm running Director on isn't part of the interconnect network but is on the same LAN as the server that has the ASM adapter card installed(and plugged into the LAN via the ethernet port on the card).
Did you have to install a patch or something to get this task to show up on your Director Console?

 

[LarryTheCucumber]

Download the trouble shooting guide.

http://www.pc.ibm.com/qtechinfo/MIG...xSeries+250|8665&doctype=&subtype=Cat&up=none

File 59p2243.exe

 

[mpmartin68]

I have had the same behaviour with 2.2 SP1. The Director service will beat the snot out of the server (I run mine on a 5100). What happens when you stop and start the Director Service?? Also, check to see if CIM2DMI service is running. If it is, stop and disable it. This is the UM services DMI client that has insighted chaos in my environment in the past.

What type of ASM are you using? There is a full length PCI card and a half length PCI card...MPM

 

[forbsy]

Actually, I've taken the advice of LarryTheCucumber and I'm running Director Server (v 3.1)on a dedicated box. The links that he's supplied have also helped out a lot*thanks again*
I'm using the full length ASM adapter. The half length one you're referring to is the newer Remote Supervisor Adapter(RSA). It's got a little more functionality such as SMTP alert forwarding.

 

[Guest_imported]

Help
I installed director 3.1 in a ibm server installation went ok but when I try to login I get an Error "An IO occurred while connecting to the director server"

Any help will be appreciated
Thanks

 

[forbsy]

I would try re-installing Director.

 

[bonoman]

Has anyone ever seen this error for the I/O connection?

x342's with W2k, sp2, sp2srp1, all patches, including director i2c patch, no high cpu problems, upgraded MDAC from 2.5 to 2.7, reinstalled, cannot get the director server status icon to to to active for both transport service or the server service.

manually starting the service just results in it dying a minute later with this error being reported to the event log. I know ibm docs say do a net stop/start twgipc after rebooting, but it does not help. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Thanks,

Curtis (kruzelc@dolosus.com)

Event Type: Error
Event Source: TWGServer
Event Category: Application Error
Event ID: 101
Date: 6/4/2002
Time: 4:16:57 AM
User: N/A
Computer: MSPB-SPARE3
Description:
Application Error
Application: 'TWGServer (TWGVersion 3.10 2001-11-30 buildid 222)'
Error Code: 11
Error Message: 'com.tivoli.twg.engine.TWGDatabaseInitException: Error during database initialization: Initialization: Connection to database failed. Database is unavailable TWGDatabase.initDB: Database exception during connection initialization for TWGSERVER. TWGDbConnection.TWGDbConnection: SQL Exception opening connection for database TWGSERVER. ODBC Name is: Director. [Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager] Data source name not found and no default driver specified'

 

[Niavlys]

Hi, I just want to give my opinion (you can read frustration) about that product. First I attended the course, describing all the benefits of Director. I came back to work the week after, installed it on 4 servers (X330). All week long, the 4 servers that were always running fine before had begun to run crazy (they were rebooting by themselves) you surely know that a SQL server highly used rebooting 4 times a day is a huge pain on the neck. I Uninstalled it reinstalled it, same troubles. The diag light on front was always amber, witch indicates a problem.
I called IBM support, after a couple of calls, someone told me to deactivate a hidden I2C device that it's not supported on X330 servers and Director!!! Done this, no good results.
I finally uninstalled it from all servers. No more problems since!

If anyone can convince me back and give me some advice, go ahead. I'm scared of reinstalling it on production servers.

Thanks for listening.

 

[EuanPirie]

Anyone have any issues installing v3 on an x232? I keep getting an error about my machine not having SMBIOS, but it does!

I've installed it on about 5 other machines no trouble at all, just can't get this last one done!

 

[esteban28]

I've worked with IBM Director and we had to disable all services because it runs very high CPU utilization.

 

[neilcresswell]

Guys,
Sounds like you are using Internet Explorer 6.0. IBM Director only supports IE Versions <6.0.
Uninstall IE6 and install IE5.5.

Neil@IBM

 

[catorze]

IBM Director works fine with IE6. Sounds like other issues here. If it says you don't have SMBIOS, ensure you're at the latest and the Vital Product Data is correct (F1). There are also a couple of patches specific to the x232/x342 for IBM Director - check the support site.

 

[HMK]

We are also attempting to implement IBM Director v3.1 in our environment.

We had an issues with the Agent reporting that the server doesn't support SMBIOS. It was attempting to read the machine type from the BIOS; on that particular machine a BIOS FW update had wiped the machine type field from the BIOS. Also, there are BIOS FW updates for servers that do not return their XXXX-XXX machine types when queried, so that they will be compatible with Director.

We've experienced the spontaneous server reboot issues with the xSeries 342 models after installing director... and it WAS fixed with a previous version of the ASM driver for win2k, however when I tried to load the latest ASM driver, disable that I2C device and the one/two automatic restart services and THEN install the director agent, reboots started happening again. All this because IBM decided to build a few servers without an onboard ASM processor.

We've had the Director server break completely over the stupidest things - like removing a server from the list of discovered devices without first removing the rack manager association.

NOW, we're getting this, and the server doesn't load.
I really don't want to have to reinstall the bloody thing again anyone have any ideas?

Event Type: Error
Event Source: TWGServer
Event Category: Java Exception
Event ID: 100
Date: 24/01/2003
Time: 9:57:01 AM
User: N/A
Computer: HYDRA
Description:
Unhandled JVM Exception
Application: 'TWGServer (TWGVersion 3.11 2002-06-21 buildid 311)'
Thread Name: Thread-2
Thread Group: ServiceThreadGroup
Exception Type: com.tivoli.twg.util.RegistryException: unable to get value of key &quot;Software\ODBC\ODBC.INI\director&quot; value &quot;Driver&quot;; open error
Stack Trace: com.tivoli.twg.util.RegistryException: unable to get value of key &quot;Software\ODBC\ODBC.INI\director&quot; value &quot;Driver&quot;; open error
at com.tivoli.twg.engine.TWGDbUtil.nativeGetRegistryString(Native Method)
at com.tivoli.twg.engine.TWGDbUtil.getRegistryString(TWGDbUtil.java:72)
at com.tivoli.twg.engine.TWGDatabase.compress(TWGDatabase.java:904)
at com.tivoli.twg.engine.TWGDbInit.run(TWGDbInit.java:121)