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CA SDM 14.1.02 Installation on Advanced Availability Environment

  • 1.  CA SDM 14.1.02 Installation on Advanced Availability Environment

    Posted Dec 10, 2015 08:58 AM

    Has anyone installed this patch?

    What issues did you face?

     

    I'm posting some of the experiences we had during the installation.

    I also posted this as a comment on the documentation available on CA Site at Post Installation Steps for Advanced Availability Configuration - CA Service Management - 14.1 - CA Technologies Documen…

     

    It is very important to suppress version control (step - 4.a) on BOTH servers (standby and background).

    Also, when applying patch on the original background server (step 6 - at that point, the server has been downgraded to standby) you must skip MDB installation step.

    Another issue we had with Oracle: we had to delete some roles or the MDB step would fail and the patch would not be applied. The list of roles to be deleted can be found on the error log at the first try. In our case, the roles were the following:

    REGADMIN AMS_GROUP WORKFLOW_ADMIN_GROUP WORKFLOW_RO_GROUP INFOPUMP_ADMIN INFOPUMP_USER SERVICE_DESK_ADMIN_GROUP SERVICE_DESK_RO_GROUP REGADMIN AMS_GROUP WORKFLOW_ADMIN_GROUP WORKFLOW_RO_GROUP INFOPUMP_ADMIN INFOPUMP_USER SERVICE_DESK_ADMIN_GROUP SERVICE_DESK_RO_GROUP

    The documentation should be improved to explain exactly where the commands should be executed. (something like CA Service Management 14.1.02 - RO86281 - Apply experience for Conventional Configuration - great work by TMACUL)

     

    Credits to fabiano.ldomingues for working on the case with CA and finding most of the solutions for the problems reported above.



  • 2.  Re: CA SDM 14.1.02 Installation on Advanced Availability Environment

    Posted Dec 10, 2015 11:02 AM

    Since the initial installation we had problems with version 14.1. I believe the reason is our scenario: CA SDM 14.1 Advanced Availability on Windows with Oracle Database (Unix).

     

    Apparently the installer patch in this scenario was not well tested.

     

    Addition to the problems reported by my colleague (Setupmdb step stops and the dubious procedure of supress control), we take one more scare: several search forms (list_cnt, etc.) and data partition changes had errors. After investigating I saw that the Multi Tenancy, although presents as Installed on the Options Manager, actually was not.

     

    I uninstalled and installed these options again and restart the whole environment and everything returned to normal. The same happened with the the Mouseover_preview_delay_time option. Just do the same.

     

    My feeling: I am very disappointed with this patch. Maybe I am wrog, but I believe this has not been tested in all scenarios. I recommend a good backup and a lot of patience. The documentation is also very poor, incompatible with the complexity of the procedure.



  • 3.  Re: CA SDM 14.1.02 Installation on Advanced Availability Environment

    Posted Dec 10, 2015 11:48 AM

    HI EricoDellaVallePrezzi76043714,

     

    Thank you for sharing your own experience.

     

    It's probably for document proposes a great reason to do not to document  step-by-step because exists a big number of universes, imagine ...

     

     

    01. Conventional

    02. Conventional with one secondary server

    03. Conventional with two secondary server

    04. HA without secondary

    05 etc...

     

    however, it's a great step to community sharing our problems, thank you again

     

    Regards

    Tiago Macul



  • 4.  Re: CA SDM 14.1.02 Installation on Advanced Availability Environment

    Posted Dec 10, 2015 01:24 PM

    I'm sorry but I disagree. Develop good documentation is a basic concept in our area. Especially on critical activities, like upgrades.

     

    Poor documentation made us waste a lot of time and could make us lose data (we lost all the custom tables, but in the homologation environment - we have to restore this five times.).

     

    Let's think: perhaps 20 scenarios! It's still too little. Are just words and hyperlinks. It's free! And the community can help them.



  • 5.  Re: CA SDM 14.1.02 Installation on Advanced Availability Environment

    Posted Dec 10, 2015 11:49 AM

    Thanks for sharing, when I was reviewing the steps I was questioning whether it was necessary to run pdm_server_control -v on both the bg and sb servers.  I'm sure this tip will save me a bit of trouble.



  • 6.  Re: CA SDM 14.1.02 Installation on Advanced Availability Environment

    Posted Dec 10, 2015 02:33 PM

    Hello All,

    Thank you for bringing these challenges to our attention.  We appreciate your feedback here, and your suggestions where there is room for improvement in the documentation and steps to apply CP2 (14.1.02). We are aware that there have been some challenges, and confusion on the documented steps for applying CP2 (14.1.02) in an Advanced Availability environment, and we are currently in the process of evaluating the solution to improve this experience for our customers. In the interim, while we continue to work through this internally, I would like to share a set of steps with you that we have tested internally, and have used at several customer sites to apply CP2 (14.1.02) successfully in an advanced availability environment.    If you need to install CP2 (14.1.02) in an advanced availability environment, please follow these steps:

     

    1. stop services on all servers

    2. ran patch installer on Standby Server

    3. run pdm_configure on Standby Server (***YOU MUST UNCHECK THE BOX TO START SERVICES WHEN COMPLETE***)

    4. run pdm_Server_control -v to suppress version control on Standby Server

    5. start services on Standby Server

    6. run pdm_server_control -b to promote the Standby Server to be the Background Server

    7. run the patch installer on original Background Server

    8. run pdm configure on original Background Server (***YOU MUST UNCHECK THE BOX TO START SERVICES WHEN COMPLETE***)

    9. run pdm_server_control -v to suppress version control on original Background Server

    10. Start services on original Background Server

    11. run pdm_server_control -b on original Background Server to promote it to be the Background Server

    12. start original Standby Server back up (WITHOUT suppressing version control)

    13. now go ahead and apply the patch to all app servers in the environment, and run pdm_configure on those (Note: you do not need to suppress version control at this point on the app servers)

    14. next, go ahead and perform the post steps including the DB load, CORS updates, BOXI related steps, and any other post steps that apply to your environment.  (The DB load part only needs to be done on the background) - NOTE:  You do NOT need to run pdm_configure first, as the post steps document currently states - please skip the pdm_configure steps, and simply apply the post step action items on each server.

    15. lastly, recycle each server in the environment, starting with the Original Background, then promoting to be the background server, then do any standby servers, and then finally the app servers.

     

    We are aware that one of the challenges is the fact that pdm_configure defaults to starting services when complete, and as such, it does not give you the chance to suppress version control, so, when run on the standby server, it would cause the ddict file to be overwritten from the template, causing your custom tables/columns to be missing from it. The reason for this is due to the wsp_schema.sch, wsp_schema.log, and wsp_index.sch not being pushed to the standby servers via version control from the original background server.  Since you would only use WSP on the background server, the files are only created there.  Using the steps we have listed above, the ddict will still get overwritten on the standby when pdm_configure is run, however, since no other servers are running at the time, AND version control is suppressed on that server, when you promote it to be the background, it will not push the bad ddict to the Original background. After you have completed the patch and the pdm_configure on the original background server, start it, and promote it to be the background, it will push the good ddict back over to the standby server, and all app servers, thus avoiding the problem, allowing you to apply CP2 successfully.  Please note that CP2, and any other patch that contains an MDB update, may not be done using "Rolling Maintenance" currently. You must shut down all servers to apply the patch properly.

     

    We hope this helps you to successfully apply CP2.

     

    Thanks,

    Jon Israel

    Principal Support Engineer

    CA Technologies



  • 7.  Re: CA SDM 14.1.02 Installation on Advanced Availability Environment

    Posted Dec 10, 2015 03:11 PM

    Finally a good explanation about that. Thank you Jon. These are the explanations I would like to read on official documentation (exposes the process).

     

    However it doesn't explains why the SetupMDB stops (existing roles). I believe this is a particular problem in environment with Oracle and I trust that CA will work to fix that (it is not our first problem with bugs on Oracle Database).

     

    Regards and thank you for attention.

     

    Fabiano D.



  • 8.  Re: CA SDM 14.1.02 Installation on Advanced Availability Environment

    Posted Dec 10, 2015 03:17 PM

    No problem - any time    I made a few additional edits to help cover the points about doing the required post patch steps. Please take a look at those added items as well when following the steps in my original reply.

     

    Thanks,

    Jon I.



  • 9.  Re: CA SDM 14.1.02 Installation on Advanced Availability Environment

    Posted Dec 11, 2015 02:34 AM

    We migrated to MS SQL from Oracle after many years of issues on running on Oracle



  • 10.  Re: CA SDM 14.1.02 Installation on Advanced Availability Environment

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Dec 14, 2015 05:53 AM

    Thank you for the feedback. We'll work with Jon Israel and the engineering team to update documentation.

     

    Regards,

    Malathi Bondili

    Information Architect
    DocOps Services Team



  • 11.  Re: CA SDM 14.1.02 Installation on Advanced Availability Environment

    Posted Dec 17, 2015 06:31 AM

    HI Malathi,

     

    when the documentation when get updated any ETA.



  • 12.  Re: CA SDM 14.1.02 Installation on Advanced Availability Environment

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Dec 22, 2015 04:21 AM

    Hi subbarao09,

     

    We are getting the updated documentation reviewed by SMEs. I'll reply in this discussion thread when the update is complete.

     

    Regards,

    Malathi Bondili

    Information Architect
    DocOps Services Team



  • 13.  Re: CA SDM 14.1.02 Installation on Advanced Availability Environment

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Jan 18, 2016 03:58 AM

    We worked with Jon Israel and updated the documentation: Post Installation Steps for Advanced Availability Configuration - CA Service Management - 14.1 - CA Technologies Documen…

    We also updated the installation steps for Windows and Non-Windows.

     

    Thank you all for the feedback and helping us improve the quality. If you have any comments or suggestions, please comment on the wiki page.

     

    Regards,

    Malathi Bondili

    Information Architect
    DocOps Services Team



  • 14.  Re: CA SDM 14.1.02 Installation on Advanced Availability Environment

    Posted Jan 18, 2016 02:53 PM

    HI Malathi Bondili and Jon_Israel,

     

       Great, Thank You for sharing!

     

     

       Hi Erico, I belive.. now... completely answered.

     

    Regards



  • 15.  Re: CA SDM 14.1.02 Installation on Advanced Availability Environment

    Posted Sep 30, 2016 10:39 AM

    Hi Jon,

     

    When we should place our customised files on the background server. After we have applied the the patches on all applications servers?

     

    /sharath



  • 16.  Re: CA SDM 14.1.02 Installation on Advanced Availability Environment

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Apr 13, 2016 11:00 AM

    Hello!

     

    We have taken the feedback from this posting and have developed a technical document that summarises the information provided.

     

    Please review:

    How to properly install CA Service Management 14.1 CP2 in an Advanced Availability Environment.