Background of SIA(Server Intelligence Agent) and CMS(Central Management Service) Initialization.

[rajdeep_marathe]

This Blog Post contains Details on what happens in the background when SIA and CMS starts.

 

Introduction:

As CMS (Central Management Server) and SIA (Server Intelligence Agent), are the core services, for BusinessObects Business Intelligence Product. It is important to understand what happens in the background when we start SIA. Below is the explanation:

When the SIA is started:

• It will first check all CMS’s in the cluster to see if they are running.


• If one is running, it will retrieve the list of servers and their command lines (including the local CMS if there is one) and start them.


• If no CMS is running, the SIA will start the local CMS. When the CMS is initialized the SIA will retrieve the list of servers linked to it, along with their command lines and then start them (except for the CMS which is already running).

When CMS is Started:

• During CMS initialization, it will create multiple connections to the CMS database (14 by default)


• In contrast, it will only make one connection with the Audit Database.


• It will then bind to the port and request ports defined (or a random request port if it is not configured)

NOTE: CMS and other services are started by SIA. Below is the screenshot from the Process Explorer:



Auditing background operation:

1. Every time the CMS start and when it makes the connection to the audit database, it by default enters/checks for all the default tables and indexes.


2. The lookup tables are the standard tables which have generally static data in it. (e.g. Standard Client IDs for Webi, list of all the servers in the cluster, lookups to match the event type id with a string (e.g. 1006 = Delete).


3. It checks for the tables every time the CMS starts.


4. By default, this is how the tables look like for Auditing (All except for COMMENTARY_MASTER which is for the Commentary Service)

Conclusion:

CMS and other services are started by SIA, which can be seen in the process explorer screenshot.
We can use the process explorer and the process monitor application to trace the progress in case the SIA is not starting. Including the logs from the logging directory and Event viewer traces.