SiteMinder's AgentWaitTime

[Vijay Masurkar]

Tuesday Tip by Gene Howard, Principal Support Engineer for 3-13-2012

What is AgentWaitTime?

It specifies the number of seconds that the Web Agent waits for the Low Level
Agent Worker process (LLAWP) to become available. When the interval expires
the Web Agent tries to connect to the Policy Server. Setting this parameter
may help resolve agent start-up errors related to LLAWP connections.

In order for the AgentWaitTime to take affect it must be set in the
WebAgent.conf file as this value is used PRIOR to the ACO information
being downloaded.

If it is not set in WebAgent.conf, the default value of 30 seconds is used.

Based on our best practice research and discussing with CA Technologies Engineering, this is a reasonable estimate for the value to be set:

AgentWaitTime = (Number of Policy servers listed in SmHost.conf -1) + (Number of Policy Servers listed in HCO -1) * 30 Seconds +10 Seconds OR 70 Seconds, whichever is greater.

[System]

Thanks for the great tip Gene (and Vijay)! Keep them coming :grin:

Chris

[Ludovic]

Hi,

Thank you for this Tip.

I have 4 policy servers and in front of these servers there is a VIP.
In my smhost.conf I have the IP address of my VIP, that becomes the formula to calculate the agentwaittime??

Thank you.

Regars,

Ludo.

[Gene Howard]

Good morning Ludo,

Siteminder web agent cannot tell your VIP from a single policy sever IP address. I do not know what you are using to create your VIP but most devices will not send failed request to another policy server so this would mean the request would only be tried once in your case. Because of this I would count the VIP as a single policy server in your calculations.

Also if your infrastructure requires High availability I would setup at least 2 entries in the Smhost.conf file so if the request to the first Policy server listed fails it has some place to fail over to and try the second request.
If there is only one listed and the request fails for whatever reason it will not attempt to send the request again to that Policy server listed it will just fail the startup process.

hope this helps.

Gene

[Ludovic]

Hi Gene,

I use my VIP only to do the boot strap.
In my HCO I have the 4 policy servers.
In that case, what is the formula ?

Thank you for your help, I am going to revise my smhost.conf to add it at least a policy server.

Best regards.

Ludo.

[Gene Howard]

Good morning Ludo,

So the formula would be the following:
AgentWaitTime = (Number of Policy servers listed in SmHost.conf -1) + (Number of Policy Servers listed in HCO -1) * 30 Seconds +10 Seconds OR 70 Seconds, whichever is greater.

In your case you have the following:
1) 2 policy servers in SMHOST.conf
2) 4 Policy servers in HCO

AgentWaitTime = (2 -1) + (4-1) * 30 Seconds +10 Seconds OR 70 Seconds, whichever is greater.

So to make sure you could have 1 Policy servr down in the Smhost.conf and 3 down in the HCO and still have your agent come up you value would be:
AgentWaitTime = 240.

Again remember this MUST be set in the Webagent.conf file this can not be set in the ACO and take affect.

hope this helps

Gene

[Anon Anon]

Hi Gene,

 

I recently encountered the following error (in Event Viewer): "Failed to initialize the message bus." (http://www.ca.com/us/support/ca-support-online/product-content/knowledgebase-articles/tec531127.aspx ) being thrown from a Siteminder Web Agent. I applied AgentWaitTime = 70 in the Webagent.conf file but still got the same error. After working with CA support, we found that the issue was AgentWaitTime being set in both (1) the ACO on the policy server and (2) the Webagent.conf file. Can you or one of your peers help me answer the following questions?

 

1) What is the purpose of AgentWaitTime in the ACO?

 

2) If AgentWaitTime it is set as '5' in the ACO, and AgentWaitTime is not set in the Webagent.conf file, what is the expected behavior of LLAWP when it starts on the Web Agent? Assuming 2 policy servers in the HCO and 2 in the SMHOST.conf.

 

Thanks,

Andy

[Ujwol]

Hi Andy,

 

Let me answer that for you.

 

1) What is the purpose of AgentWaitTime in the ACO?

 

Ujwol => This has been described in the title post in the current thread. Let me know if you need any further clarificaitons.

 

2) If AgentWaitTime it is set as '5' in the ACO, and AgentWaitTime is not set in the Webagent.conf file, what is the expected behavior of LLAWP when it starts on the Web Agent? Assuming 2 policy servers in the HCO and 2 in the SMHOST.conf.

 

Ujwol =>

As stated above, AgentWaitTime defines the time the LLAWP waits to initialize. As the ACO is present in policy store, it might happen that Agent might not have even read the ACO when it is initializing.

 

If you don't specify AgentWaitTime in the WebAgent.conf then depending upon the FIPS mode, it will go by the default minimum AgentWaitTime.

In FIPS Only mode, the default minimum AgentWaitTime = 20 seconds

In all other FIPS mode, the default minimum AgentWaitTime = 5 seconds

 

It is best to specify the same value of the AgentWaitTime in both WebAgent.conf and ACO.

 

Cheers,

Ujwol

 

[Praveen Jain]

Gene,

 

In this example you used to following formula to calculate it.

 

AgentWaitTime = (2 -1) + (4-1) * 30 Seconds +10 Seconds OR 70 Seconds, whichever is greater

 

I dont understand how it computes to 240. My calculation says 101. Here is my calculation.

 

AgentWaitTime  = 1 + 3*30 + 10 = 1 + 90 + 10 = 101

 

Am I missing anything here?

[Vijay Masurkar]

Praveen,  There is a typo in the original formula.  It should be like this.

 

AgentWaitTime = { [ (Number of Policy servers listed in SmHost.conf -1) + (Number of Policy Servers listed in HCO -1) ] * 30 Seconds +10 Seconds } OR 70 Seconds, whichever is greater.

 

Best wishes. - Vijay