Monitoring, Stopping, and Restarting the Services

FlexNet Manager Suite 2020 R2 (On-Premises)

It is important to monitor health of the batch scheduler and batch processor services. If they are not operational, FlexNet Manager Suite is not performing tasks that manage data integrity. The web interface continues to operate, but data that relies on background processes (such as license consumption calculations) is not updated until the processes are once again operational.

In the main, you should not need to intervene manually with these services. By design, both are set to automatically restart after failure, and this is an important part of the system’s ability to heal itself. For example, if the database becomes inaccessible or the message queues are misconfigured, the batch scheduler responds by shutting down. Thereafter, the Windows Service restart setting allows the batch scheduler to try again each minute until processing can begin again.

Tip: This configuration is set during installation, and should not be changed without configuring a different method of restarting the service.

If you do need to restart the batch scheduler, previously requested tasks that are queued are preserved. These have been saved to the database as part of their processing (see How Batch Scheduling and Processing Works). On restart, the batch scheduler restores its internal state (the task queues) and continues as before.

If you restart the batch processor, running tasks are not left as orphans. On shut-down, the batch processor forcibly closes any processes that it are currently executing. These tasks are marked as failures in the execution history in the log file. Failed tasks are not resumed on restart. For this reason, it is best practice to use the following process for a shut-down and restart of the services:

1. Pause the batch scheduler to stop it sending new tasks to the batch processor:

   ShadowHost.exe BatchProcessTaskConsole process-dispatch -p

2. Monitor the running tasks, repeating until no tasks are listed as executing:

   ShadowHost.exe BatchProcessTaskConsole.exe list-tasks

   Tip: You can also review BatchProcessExecution/BatchProcessExecutionInfo in the database.
3. Stop the services and complete whatever adjustments are necessary.
4. Restart the services. The batch scheduler restarts in its paused mode.
5. Resume normal processing of the pending queue, and dispatch of tasks to the batch processor:

   ShadowHost.exe BatchProcessTaskConsole process-dispatch -r

For more details of pausing and resuming batch scheduling, see Additional Verbs for the Batch Scheduler.