Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Novell eDirectory Server Monitoring

How to monitor Novell eDirectory server and IDM drivers during runtime.

Monitoring Novell eDirectory server

Novell iMonitor can be used to monitor Novell eDirectory server. However, iMonitor does not have runtime notification option. IDM admin can use iMonitor to verify the health of drivers, replicas, replica synchronization and lot more features. Novell iMonitor is a very good tool if used wisely.
While working with couple of Novell Consultants learned a lot on how to use iMonitor. I will be updating my blog with the same.

Also knowing about the internals of eDirectory is also very useful it you are using Novell eDirectory for mission critical applications.

Coming to monitoring software, in addition to iMonitor, Novell Audit is used to check for monitoring drivers and Remote Loader. Notification of events can be configured in novell audit for lot many scenarios. A few of them are mail notification on stopping and starting drivers. On stopping and starting remote loader services, events are notified through email.

Novell eDirectory server can also be monitored using Minichecker software. MiniChecker is designed to run several different types of checks (such as file size, LDAP timestamp, or JDBC query) which return either an Up, Warning, or Down status, and then send an alert (such as email and/or an SNMP trap) when the status changes.  

For example, it can be used to monitor cache files of DirXML drivers, check synchronization between and within LDAP directories, or other custom needs.  MiniChecker can be run in GUI mode (by default) to configure and/or run checkers, or in console mode to run a specified configuration file.

How to debug eDirectory Coring Issue?

Below are some points to ponder to debug Novell eDirectory Coring Issues.

1) Is there any disk space issue. As per my observation when disk space reaches 95% eDirectory cores.

2) This happens on all servers or just one? If only one, is the server running the drivers?

3) How many drivers do you have running on that server? If the server is running many drivers and do you have any load issues.

4) What patches have been installed for eDirectory software and IDM (engine and drivers)?

5) Since when this has been happening?

6) Did you tune eDirectory for the load is going to receive? What start up config set up does eDirectory have? (pre_ndsd_start and _ndsdb.ini)

7) Does the server have enough disk space?

8) What are the specs of the server (hardware)?

9) What is the server doing when it abends?

10) Are you syncing passwords?