Hp Openview Errors

Last week, I had a few issues with bringing up the HP Openview Operations Manager. The snap-in wouldn't load .It just gave this error.

"The Console is unable to connect to the server. Please make sure that all services including the database are up and running."

Now on the services.msc in Windows, the database services and related services were all up and running. I could also connect to the db using the SQL studio. ( My DB is MS SQL 2005)

Then i tried to run this
C:\Program Files\HP\HP BTO Software\support\OVMigration\Binn\osql -E openview -S DBserverName\InstanceName

That too showed that things were running fine.

Next I tried running the command on the OVO server
vpstat -8

It showed that all services except OvEpMsgActSrv was running fine.

You can also use ovc -status to check the services.

Now this turned out to be failing due to a huge message queue file at this location.
"\Program Files\HP Openview\Data\Shared\tmp\queues"

Once that was dumped, I restarted the services with
vpstat -8 -r

and things were fine again. This is how a good configuration should look.


D:\HP\OM\support\OVMigration\Binn>osql.exe -E openview -s SERVERNAME\DBNAME
1>
2>
3>
4>
5> quit

D:\HP\OM\support\OVMigration\Binn>
D:\HP\OM\support\OVMigration\Binn>ovc -status
ovcd OV Control CORE (5624) Running
opcmsga OVO Message Agent AGENT,EA (2148) Running
opcmsgi OVO Message Interceptor AGENT,EA (6480) Running
opcle OVO Logfile Encapsulator AGENT,EA (428) Running
opcacta OVO Action Agent AGENT,EA (5580) Running
agtrep OV Discovery Agent AGENT,AgtRep (5776) Running
coda OV Performance Core COREXT (6456) Running
opcmona OVO Monitor Agent AGENT,EA (6576) Running
ovconfd OV Config and Deploy COREXT (9720) Running
opcwbemi OVO WMI Interceptor AGENT,EA (5572) Running
ovbbccb OV Communication Broker CORE (4424) Running
ovcs OV Certificate Server SERVER (1524) Running
ovtomcatB OV Tomcat(B) Servlet Container WEB (6128) Running

D:\HP\OM\support\OVMigration\Binn>
D:\HP\OM\support\OVMigration\Binn>vpstat -3
============================================================
running: D:\HP\OM\bin\vpstat.exe
version: A.22.0.56.30 on SERVERNAME
now: Sun May 01 11:01:25 2011
============================================================

============================================================
==================== Services Information ==================
============================================================

Configuration file: D:\HP\OM\data\conf\vpstat\vpstat.conf
Ver: 0.8.10.074
Date: Thu Jun 19 15:40:36 2008
Remark: HP Operation Manager - Performance.

Services on : LOCAL MACHINE

(NT Services) :

OK: All services : SERVICE_ACTIVE


D:\HP\OM\support\OVMigration\Binn>vpstat -8
============================================================
running: D:\HP\OM\bin\vpstat.exe
version: A.22.0.56.30 on UP-OVO01
now: Sun May 01 11:01:28 2011
============================================================

============================================================
==================== Processes Information =================
============================================================

Configuration file: D:\HP\OM\data\conf\vpstat\vpstat.conf
Ver: 0.8.10.074
Date: Thu Jun 19 15:40:36 2008
Remark: HP Operation Manager - Performance.


OK:ALL CRITICAL PROCESSES ARE RUNNING

D:\HP\OM\support\OVMigration\Binn>

PIX and SMTP troubles

Twice in our current environment, we've had to face issues with PIX interfering with very specific SMTP communications. The first time, one of our users could not receive a particular type of pdf attachments from one source. After a hell of troubleshooting, it finally turned out to be that PIX ESMTP filtering was the source of the problem.

This time, there was another similar issue. Some domains with a big list of entries in the "ADDITIONAL SECTION" of the DNS response could not me sent emails. The error being

Delivery Failure
Attempted Delivery to: Unknown  Error: 554 5.4.4 [internal] domain lookup failed

This error though was not correct, since the DNS lookups were successful in the nslookup utility on the messaging gateway.

Digging further in pointed to the issue being related to large DNS query responses which were being rejected by PIX DNS restrictions. DNS UDP Packets of size greater than 512 bytes were not allowed by PIX. So Once that was removed, things started working well.