At the time that the app installs last failed and I gave up, I had IP-Name addresses in the server ar.cfg files for both admin and member servers with short name, FQDN, and IP address, as well as a Domain-Name entry, and entries for the server group and servers (by short and long name) in the local hosts files, and the server group under two A records in my Active Directory DNS. There was never any load balancer involved. I turned every knob in the documentation and in the knowledgebase articles, as well as a few that support told me to try, and the app installers still would not install properly. My favorite was when the ITSM 7.6.03 installer completed "Successfully," but installed only the Foundation module, skipping Incident, Problem, Change, and Asset.
Christopher Strauss, Ph.D. Call Tracking Administration Manager University of North Texas Computing & IT Center http://itsm.unt.edu/ -----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Danny Kellett Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2010 2:46 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: DNS entry for Server Group You have to remember that if the AR Server is looking for the FQDN, then you have to remember how the TCP packet will travel to get to that address. E.g. If its not in the local host of the AR server (which I recommend as well as having an IP-Name: FQDN in the ar.conf) then the packet could route out to front end side of the firewall and thus get rejected. I add the AR Servers and the front end address of the firewall to DNS for the client, but I also add the same details to the local host of the AR servers. Kind regards Danny Kellett -----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of strauss Sent: 11 November 2010 19:56 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: DNS entry for Server Group I never got the apps to install properly - ITSM 7.6.03 refused to install in a server group environment, even with the admin server that I was installing on taken out of the group. As a result I never even got to try the SRM, RKM, and SLM installations. I just finished bring the same server up completely with all apps in standalone mode - the cleanest install I've had lately except for RKM, and am debating just adding servers to the same db (no server group). I _might_ try to build a server group on the complete stack, but with the expectation that server groups are a black hole that you can pour time and energy into without ever finding the bottom. Needless to say, I am not impressed. It's no accident that there are dozens of KB articles on 7.x server group problems, and they are not exhaustive of the issues (nor always in agreement on the solutions). BTW, one lesson learned (now that you have to install FTS to support RKM) is that the ARS installer adds FTS to the ar.cfg incorrectly using the FQDN: Server-Plugin-Alias: ARSYS.ARF.FTS ARSYS.ARF.FTS servername.domain.unt.edu:9998 You won't notice it until you try to index something (we've never had FTS before, plus this is a brand new one in 7.6.03, so we would never have noticed), OR until you try to install RKM 7.6.03. It has to be changed to: Server-Plugin-Alias: ARSYS.ARF.FTS ARSYS.ARF.FTS servername:9998 ...preferably before the install. During my RKM install, it generated 177,000 error entries in the arerror.log when I didn't change it, but left it as installed by ARS 7.6.03 with the FQDN. Most of the errors that I have encountered in the server group testing involved plugin errors, and of course a lot of the plugins were converted from C to java in 7.6.03 so I don't expect them to work as reliably as they once did, anyway. The installers - ARS, Atrium, and the apps - like to switch between short server name and FQDN in how they define the Server-Plugin-Aliases, and I think that is a _major_ part of the problem, which becomes a fatal error in a server group. Until BMC sorts this out completely - and DOCUMENTS it, it may be more trouble than it's worth. The only people who have responded to me with information that are actually using server groups successfully (after numerous support tickets and changes to the ar.cfg/conf file) are on 7.5.00.006 or earlier, not 7.6.03. I cannot recommend 7.6.03 for server groups (yet;...ever??) without more testing than I probably have time for. It is more important to me to migrate to the 7.6.03 apps than to get server groups working, so I will not re-visit a 7.5/7.6.00 implementation, but will probably limit myself to having multiple servers on the same db. You may find 7.5 a safer route, since it sounds like a lot of sites (on arslist) have successfully upgraded their AR servers to 7.5 underneath the 7.0.x (or custom) applications. Christopher Strauss, Ph.D. Call Tracking Administration Manager University of North Texas Computing & IT Center http://itsm.unt.edu/ -----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Murnane, Phil Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2010 1:07 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: DNS entry for Server Group Christopher: Did you ever get you 7.6.03 server group to fail over properly? I have a customer that's planning to update their 7.1 ARS server groups, and we're trying to figure out whether 7.5 or 7.6 is best for now. Thanks! --Phil _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org attend wwrug11 www.wwrug.com ARSList: "Where the Answers Are"
