SAP Omnichannel POS by GK – Admin & Operational topics

This is the start of a new set of blogs, which focus on Technical Topics related to SAP Omnichannel POS by GK.

SAP Omnichannel POS by GK, is a partner product, which enables a seamless and scalable solution to manage the Retail Stores.

This blog discusses and helps in Administrating & running a GK Solution w.r.t its specific Technical sophistication and complexity

This page discusses specifically about the Restart pitfalls and Restart tips of ‘SAP Omnichannel POS by GK’

Background:

GK Solution, without any doubt is the lifeline of all Retail Customers to have their stores running, because:

Any unforeseen issues with any of the 25 odd GK applications will have the potential to bring the retail business to a stand still.
Any extension of planned downtimes will mean a lot of chaos and contingent busines planning to be put into action, to keep the business running, until the System / Solution is back

Technical detail:

GK Solution, especially the GK central Applications from their Store Device Control, Omnichannel POS, Offline Mobile Store, Label and Poster Printing/Service are very critical to the Business Operations. In addition, they also are very delicate and sophisticated, because:

The GK Central applications form a cluster of their own on top of SAP Enqueue Server (in some installations) and on top of the DB (for DB based Cluster management).
The core of the cluster is ActiveMQ, which is embedded into the Cluster Infrastructure Server (CIS)
Hence, the application Cluster Infrastructure Server (mostly identified as CIS) is the Cluster Master.
All other GK Central applications are actually dependent on at least one instance of the above mentioned CIS.
This means, any disturbance to CIS application (DB unavailability, Network issue, application restart inadverdently, or any other possible issue) has the possibility to bring the complete GK retail solution to a standstill.
The actual health & status of any GK cluster application can only be gleaned from their respective logs (directory which is defined in the config tool with the parameter ‘app.root.dir.local’)

Alternatively, a glimpse of the status of GK Cluster applicaitons can be seen from the table: GKR_MASTER.GK_CLUSTER_PARTICIPANT (Example screenshot below)

But be aware, the above table might be only useful to get a glimpse. To get the detailed status of any GK application, check the logs of them on each server node.

Restart Tips:

To restart a Netweaver Java system running all these GK Cluster applications, follow the below procedure:

Edit the timeout parameter for ‘jms-engine.jndi.lookup.timeout’ for CIS and all other GK Cluster applications in the SM client. Set the value to only a reasonable maximum amount of time, that the Cluster applications can try and connect to the Embedded ActiveMQ inside of CIS. Format = XXm (i.e: 10m –> this denotes 10 minutes of timeout)
During Stop, follow the sequence:
1. Stop all GK Cluster applications except CIS
2. Stop CIS at last
During Start, follow the sequence
1. Startup CIS
2. Confirm that CIS is up and running from the logs
3. Startup all other GK cluster applications
4. check logs / above mentioned table for the status of the GK Applicaitons.

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