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Deployment Agent Diagnostics
Diagnostics provide the administrator with an overall view of the health of the Deployment Agent in terms of the relationship and communication with the Management Server.
Diagnostics can be enabled or disabled for each Management Server from the Home > Deployment Groups > Global Settings > Failover Servers tab by selecting the Diagnostics Enabled option next to the relevant Management Server. This option is disabled by default.
When the Diagnostics Enabled option is selected, the Deployment Agent on managed endpoint devices runs a series of self-tests on first contact with the Management Server or when requested by the Management Server during a poll.
Additionally, to perform a manual diagnostics test select the Request Diagnostics option from the Actions panel available from the All Computers node.
An event which indicates the test result, is raised in the Windows Event Log on the managed endpoint device and sent to the Management Server.
Each test provides a success or failure result and, where a test fails, a detailed error report is included in the event report.
In the event of a test failure the Management Console highlights, in red, the names of the computers where the failure occurred and also highlights the deployment groups in the navigation pane containing computers on which the tests failed.
There are four specific tests that are run when diagnostics are requested:
Connectivity
The connectivity test involves the Deployment Agent attempting to poll the Management Server. Any response, other than an HTTP 200 (Success) return value, indicates a failure and a detailed error message is returned. If this test fails, the results cannot be sent to the Management Server (as there is no connectivity) but can be viewed in the local Application Windows Event Log on the endpoint device.
Download of Packages
This test downloads a sample file from the Management Server to the local hard disk of the endpoint device, using the Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS).
Instead of downloading a full MSI package, the Deployment Agent downloads a small XML file which can be easily validated and has a minimal impact on network bandwidth. The XML file is downloaded from the same directory as standard MSI packages to ensure the same access rights affect both file types. Once the test is complete, the downloaded file is deleted.
Since BITS downloads can be delayed if the local computer is under heavy load, the download occurs within a new high priority BITS job, ensuring the test completes in a shorter time. A single BITS job is used to download files from all enabled failover URLs.
If any errors are reported during the download, the test fails. A description of the error is included in the test results.
High Priority Events
The high priority events diagnostics test allows critical events to be sent to the Management Server database from the managed endpoint device. A typical high priority event is the reporting of a failure to install packages. The test attempts a call by the Deployment Agent from the managed endpoint to the Management Server with an empty list of events. Any error values returned by the call are added to the results.
Upload of Events
The diagnostics test attempts to upload an events file using BITS from the local hard disk on the endpoint device to the Management Server. The events file is empty so as to help minimize impact on network bandwidth, and is uploaded to the same directory on the Management Server as standard event uploads.
%\ProgramFiles%\AppSense\ManagementCenter\Server\WebSite\Deployment\Events
Since BITS uploads can be delayed if the local computer is under heavy load, the upload occurs within a new high priority BITS job ensuring the test completes in a shorter time.
If any errors are reported during the upload, the test fails. The description of the error is included in the test results.
This test only verifies that events can be sent from the Deployment Agent on the managed endpoint device to the Management Server. No checks are made to ensure that the events can be uploaded to the database. When this fails, an event is added to the Management Server event log and raises a Management Center event, where possible.
The Computers view within a specific Deployment Group provides a Diagnostic State which indicates the current state of the diagnostics taking place on the endpoint device.
There are four diagnostics states including:
- Untested
- Pending
- Requested
- Completed
The diagnostics test results are reported to the Management Server and displayed in the Diagnostics tab in the Management Panel area of the Computers view within the relevant deployment group, including a breakdown of the test type and the result of each test.