14.1 Planned Restart of Components
- Billy Sewell (Unlicensed)
Why is a restart necessary?
When you start the system up, Day 0 for each FRU is driven by the time the system is started up and the relative timezone of the FRU. For example, if you start the system up at 1am EST, then that would be 10pm PST, so day 0 for any PST FRUs would be the day before Day 0 for any EST FRUs. For users this is particularly noticeable for the optimizer and its run days and can cause problems.
In order to move Day 0 on to the next day, the component needs to be restarted - something a 24x7 business may find difficult to work with.
The above issues are overcome by providing the ability for the system, once started, to automatically restart any single component on a timed basis, which is a time relative to its own time zone. Thus, specifically, it is possible to configure the system to restart each FRU at an appropriately quiet time for the business.
Mandatory Database sp083_system_parameters
A time of day may be set in the database at which the APIAgent, GanttRouter and FRUs(separately per FRU) self-terminate. The standard System Monitor recovery mechanism then ensures that the halted components are restarted. When an FRU restarts it resets its "day zero" to "today". Each component log the reason for halting, so it is possible to differentiate these halts from any caused by an outage.
SERVICEManager allows these parameters to be controlled, or they may be updated directly in the database:
| Name | Description | Display Name | Installed Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| apia_daily_restart_time | Time of day at which APIAgent will halt and be restarted (HHMI) (default TZ) | APIA: Daily Restart Time | NULL |
| gr_daily_restart_time | Time of day at which GanttRouter will halt and be restarted (HHMI) (default TZ) | GR: Daily Restart Time | NULL |
| fru_daily_restart_time | Time of day at which FRU will halt and be restarted (HHMI) (FRU TZ) | FRU: Daily Restart Time | NULL |
Setting per FRU times
FRU-specific times may be set in Database sp213_scheduler_parameters.
The actual time that it takes for an FRU to restart is dependent on the number of employees covered, the horizon over which it is working, and the number of jobs booked. Whilst the restart is ongoing, the FRU process will be unavailable to the business for further job booking etc and, as such, it is best to choose a time that is 'less busy' for the business to do this restart. Work with your business users to determine when this might be.