Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved
Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved


Chapter 9 Process Management : Responsibilities of the Process Sentinels

Responsibilities of the Process Sentinels
The following list describes the responsibilities of the Process Sentinels:
Detect SWDIR\logs\sw_error and SWDIR\logs\sw_warn files and send a work item to the system administrator (swadmin) informing them that the file has been created and on which server.
Check that there is enough disk space using the SWDIR\fspart file (you can configure which partitions to check). If there is not enough space, a work item is sent to the administrator informing them of the situation.
Provide interfaces for integration with TIBCO Hawk® - See the TIBCO iProcess Engine: Administrator’s Guide for more information.
Distribution and Hierarchy of Process Sentinels
In a distributed TIBCO iProcess Engine node cluster where there are a number of servers running, it is necessary to have Process Sentinels running on each server. To keep the system processes synchronized, the Process Sentinels are designed so that there are master Process Sentinels running on one server and slave Process Sentinels running on all the other servers. See TIBCO iProcess Engine to TIBCO iProcess Engine Network Communication in a Node Cluster on page 135 for more information about how process sentinels communicate between servers.
The following diagram shows that the Master process controls the slave processes in a hierarchical model. The master and slave processes have different responsibilities, which are described in Master and Slave Responsibilities.

 

 
Master and Slave Responsibilities
The master and slave processes have different responsibilities for tasks that they can perform. There are also some tasks that are common across master and slave processes.
Common Process Sentinel Tasks
The following operations are performed by both the master and slave Process Sentinels:
Maintaining the process_config table to store the status of processes.
Check that there is enough disk space using the SWDIR\fspart file (you can configure which partitions to check). If there is not enough space, a work item is sent to the administrator informing them of the situation.
Check for SWDIR\logs\sw_error and sw_warn files. If any are detected, a work item is sent to the system administrator.
Master Process Sentinel Tasks
The master Process Sentinels can perform all of the above tasks but the following task is only performed by the master Process Sentinels.
The startup and shutdown requests for server processes are broadcast by the SWDIR\util\swsvrmgr utility. The master Process Sentinels will record the new system status when the shutdown or startup is complete.

Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved
Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved