Application Service Management
You can perform the following common administration tasks for application services:
- •Enable and disable services and service processes.
- •Configure the domain to restart service processes.
- •Remove an application service.
- •Troubleshoot problems with an application service.
Note: You can perform all of the common administration tasks for system services, except for removing the system service.
Enabling and Disabling Services and Service Processes
You can enable and disable application services and service processes in the Administrator tool. When a service is enabled, there must be at least one service process enabled and running for the service to be available. By default, all service processes are enabled.
The behavior of a service when it starts service processes depends on how it is configured:
- •If the service is configured for high availability, then the service starts the service process on the primary node. The service processes on the backup nodes are in Standing By state.
- •If the service is configured to run on a grid, then the service starts service processes on all nodes that have the service role.
A service does not start a disabled service process in any situation.
The state of a service depends on the state of its processes. A service can have the following states:
- •Available. You have enabled the service and at least one service process is running. The service is available to process requests.
- •Unavailable. You have enabled the service and none of its processes are running. This can be because the service processes are disabled or failed to start. The service is not available to process requests.
- •Disabled. You have disabled the service.
You can disable a service to perform a management task. You might want to disable the service process on a node if you need to shut down the node for maintenance. When you disable a service, all associated service processes stop, but they remain enabled.
The following table describes the different states of a service and its processes:
Service Process Configuration | Service Process State | Description |
|---|
Enabled | Running | The service process is running on the node. |
Enabled | Standing By | The service process is enabled but is not running because another service process is running as the primary service process. It is on standby to run in case of service failover. |
Disabled | Disabled | The service is enabled but the service process is not running on the node. |
Enabled | Stopped | The service is unavailable. |
Enabled | Failed | The service and service process are enabled, but the service process could not start. |
Viewing Service Processes
You can view the state of a service process on the Processes view of a service. You can view the state of all service processes on the Overview view of the domain.
To view the state of a service process:
1. In the Administrator tool, click the Manage tab > Services and Nodes view.
2. In the Domain Navigator, select a service.
3. In the contents panel, select the Processes view.
The Processes view displays the state of the processes.
Configuring Restart for Service Processes
If an application service process becomes unavailable while a node is running, the domain tries to restart the process on the same node based on the restart options configured in the domain properties.
1. In the Administrator tool, click the Manage tab > Services and Nodes view.
2. In the Domain Navigator, select the domain.
3. In the Properties view, configure the following restart properties:
Domain Property | Description |
|---|
Maximum Restart Attempts | Number of times within a specified period that the domain attempts to restart an application service process when it fails. The value must be greater than or equal to 1. Default is 3. |
Within Restart Period (sec) | Maximum period of time that the domain spends attempting to restart an application service process when it fails. If a service fails to start after the specified number of attempts within this period of time, the service does not restart. Default is 900. |
Removing Application Services
You can remove an application service using the Administrator tool. Before removing an application service, you must disable it.
Note: You cannot remove a system service.
Disable the service before you delete the service to ensure that the service is not running any processes. If you do not disable the service, you may have to choose to wait until all processes complete or abort all processes when you delete the service.
1. In the Administrator tool, click the Manage tab > Services and Nodes view.
2. In the Domain Navigator, select the application service.
3. In the Manage tab Actions menu, select Delete.
4. In the warning message that appears, click Yes to stop other services that depend on the application service.
5. If the Disable Service dialog box appears, choose to wait until all processes complete or abort all processes, and then click OK.
Troubleshooting Application Services
- I think that a service is using incorrect environment variable values. How can I find out which environment variable values are used by a service.
Set the error severity level for the node to debug. When the service starts on the node, the Domain log will display the environment variables that the service is using.