Document revision date: 19 July 1999

Availability Manager Version 1.2

Release Notes

The following notes address late-breaking information and known problems for the Availability Manager, Version 1.2.

Recommended Hardware Configurations

Compaq recommends using, at a minimum, one of the following hardware configurations:

System	Hardware
Windows NT	350 MHz Intel Pentium processor with 64 MB of memory
Windows NT	500 MHz Alpha processor with 128 MB of memory
OpenVMS	500 MHz Alpha processor with 128 MB of memory

Windows NT Installation Notes

The following notes pertain to the installation of the Availability Manager Data Analyzer on Windows NT systems.

• Running the self-extracting .EXE multiple times
  The Availability Manager software for Windows NT systems is packaged in a self-extracting executable (.EXE). If you run multiple installations of Availability Manager Version 1.2, the .EXE unpacks the installation in the same temporary folder. As a result of a duplicate installation, the system displays a message box entitled Overwrite Protection, which contains a message that "the following file is already installed on your system... Do you wish to overwrite the file?" You can ignore these messages. Click the button "Yes to All."
• Registry Subkey message
  In some situations during an installation, the system displays the message "Registry Service Subkey already exists." You can ignore this message.
• Self-extracting executable not exiting
  In some situations, the self-extracting executable extracts the installation package, but does not exit and start the installation. When this occurs, the system displays the "Unpacking" progress bar, and then nothing happens. The task manager shows the self-extracting executable as an active process, but it appears to be stalled. To activate the Availability Manager installation, press the CTRL-ALT-DEL keys, and then select "Cancel." The InstallShield^® progress bar then appears, and the installation continues normally.

Limit Your Collection of Detailed Data

By default, the only data collected on OpenVMS nodes is node summary data. You can collect this data on many nodes without incurring performance problems. However, restrict your collection of other data to a small number of nodes at a time.

These performance problems will be addressed in a future release.

Some DECamds Features Not Yet Implemented

The Availability Manager is, in most respects, a Java® implementation of the DECamds availability management software product. However, some features of DECamds have not yet been implemented in the Availability Manager. These features are planned to be added in a future release.

Default Data Collection on OpenVMS Nodes

By default, the only data collected on OpenVMS nodes is node summary data. To view other data in an OpenVMS Node pane, you must select each type of data you want to collect on Data Collection pages. To use these pages, select the Customize VMS menu option on the Customize menu in the Application window.

Avoid Using Multiple Data Analyzers on the Same System

When you try to start the Data Analyzer, you might see the following warning:

Could not establish session lock! Another AM section may be running.

Either one of the following situations might exist:

• Two sessions of the Availability Manager have overlapped, and the driver is not set up to handle multiple sessions. Check the task bar to see if the Data Analyzer is already running.
• A Data Analyzer session terminated abnormally, and the driver has hung. This problem is indicated if the Windows NT Task Manager shows that a wjview.exe process still exists. If this occurs, follow these steps:
  1. Reboot your system to clear the driver confusion.
  2. Delete the file AM_SESSION.LOCK in your installation directory.

Deleting the AM_SESSION.LOCK File on Windows NT Systems

If the Availability Manager is shut down improperly or abruptly on a Windows NT system, the AM_SESSION.LOCK file might not be deleted, thereby preventing subsequent sessions from starting. To correct this situation, if you are sure that an active Availability Manager session is not running, delete this file from the directory containing your Availability Manager application files; then restart the application.

Restarting the Availability Manager After an Uninstall Operation

To uninstall the Availability Manager from a Windows NT system using
Add/Remove Programs on the Windows NT Control panel, follow these steps:

1. Uninstall the software.
2. Restart the system.
   This step completes the removal of the network bindings.
3. Optionally, reinstall the software.

If you perform step 2 but omit step 3, starting the Availability Manager could cause the system to fail. (Failure might occur even after the system appears to restart successfully.) To recover from this situation, reinstall the Availability Manager (uninstalling the software again is not necessary), and then restart your system at the end of the installation. The Availability Manager should run properly.

Large Fonts Can Cause Incorrect Displays

If you specify large fonts in the Windows NT Display control panel, the text in some customize and fix dialog boxes does not display correctly.

Blank Rows in Display Trees

Some displays of data in object trees might have blank rows because of irregularities in the underlying synchronization. This problem is more obvious in dual-processor or multiprocessor systems.

Although a fix does not exist for this problem, a workaround is being investigated. Refer to the following website for updates to the current version of the software:

www.openvms.digital.com/openvms/products/availman/index.html

Event Display Problems

The following list contains known event reporting problems:

• Unimplemented threshold events

  LOSTVC NOPROC

• Node summary display problem
  Stopping the collection of node summary data does not clear the data from the Node pane.
• Event reporting irregularities
  • Some posted events might not be removed from the display.
  • LOVOTE and LOVLSP events are posted for every node in the cluster rather once per cluster.

Additional irregularities in the reporting of events might occur.

Windows NT Data Collector Does Not Recognize New Disk Configurations

If you change the disk configuration on a running Windows NT node, the Data Collector does not recognize the modified disk configuration and continues to report the previous configuration to the Data Analyzer. For the Data Collector to recognize the new disk configuration, you must stop and restart the Data Collector.

Time Required to Detect Processes Coming and Going

It may take up to 60 seconds for the Availability Manager to detect that a process has gone away and to update the screen display.

Nodes Not Deleted from Cluster Summary

The Availability Manager does not immediately remove nodes displayed on the Cluster Transition page when those nodes are no longer connected to the system.

Problem with Daylight Saving Time Changes

For some time zones, especially European ones, the time-zone logic in the Java software libraries that the client uses might disagree with the Windows NT operating system about when the shift to daylight saving time occurs. For a two-week period in early April and late October, you might see a one-hour discrepancy between the time shown in the Availability Manager client and the time of day shown by the system and the Date-Time Control panel.

Also, Sun's Java classes disagree with Windows NT about whether daylight saving time even exists for Asian time zones. The Windows DateTime CP usually indicates that daylight saving time is not possible for these zones; time strings generated from the calendar classes in Java appear to recognize a daylight saving time shift. Therefore, for all time zones between eastern Europe, going east to Alaska, a one-hour discrepancy is likely from April through October. This discrepancy occurs for months at a time.

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