In this blog, I will share with you how to do the installation of this solution step by step. Let’s remember the architecture.

Deploy kubernetes Plug-in

Firstly, download the Kubernetes Plugin, download the version 2.0.00 from the Kubernetes plug-in download page in the Electronic Product Distribution site.

Once downloaded, publish the plug-in by putting the zip file in the following location:

$HOME_CTM/ctm_em/AUTO_DEPLOY

Generate an API Token

Basically, the API Token will be used later in the next step. In fact, we need to set up access to Control-M to register the Control-M/Agents, for sure, this step should be done by a Control-M Administrator.

I assume that you know what is an API Token, and how to generate it, below are the steps quickly.

To generate the API Token, go to the Control-M UI -> Configuration, from the drop-down list, select API Tokens.

The API Token tab appears, click Add Token.

To generate the API Token, fill the following:

• The Token Name field.
• The Roles field, remove or select the roles that you want to associate with the API Token (by default all roles are selected, which is not recommended).
• Expiration Date, select Indefinitely from the drop-down list.

Click on Generate button.

Prepare the Control-M Agent deployment

I recommend to deploy the agent using the Helm shared by BMC! It is easy to configure and to maintain in a Kubernetes cluster.

First of all, add a repository named controlm to contain the helm charts of the Control-M/Agent that is obtained from the Control-M Repository by running the following:

helm repo add controlm https://controlm-charts.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/

Then, ensure that the Control-M repository is listed as one of your repositories by running the following command line:

helm repo list

You can also list the charts within the new controlm repo by running the following command:

helm search repo controlm

Create the namespace, by executing the following:

kubectl create namespace ctmagt

Control-M Agent deployment

To deploy the Control-M Agent you should execute the Helm Install inside your kubernetes cluster:

helm install ctm-dbi controlm/controlm-agent --version 9.21.200 \
--set server.name=dbitest --set server.host=dbitest --set server.port=7005 --set server.ip=XX.XX.XX.XX \
--set api.endpoint=https://dbitest.x.com:8446/automation-api \
--set api.token=b2XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX== \
--set pvc.storageClass=dbistorage

Adapt the command line to your environment!

Check the pod status on the namespace (ctmagt) just created, once the agents pods are ready, check if they appear in Control-M -> Configuration.

By default, two pods should be created, two agents deployed. Sometimes agents are not available directly, don’t hesitate to disable and enable them.

Conclusion

Finally, we have two Control-M agents deployed on Kubernetes.

In the next blog we will see how to create the connection profile, and how to create Control-M jobs to execute Kubernetes jobs.

L’article Control-M for Kubernetes – Installation est apparu en premier sur dbi Blog.

To implement Control-M for Kubernetes you will need to verify and prepare some prerequisites, like check access, compatibility with OS, persistent storage, memory, firewall, aso.

The compatibility between Control-M components has been shown in the previous blog.

Access

First of all, the following access should be delivered to the expert(s) to allow a smooth implementation of Control-M for Kubernetes:

• Full admin access to Control-M UI
• Access on the servers hosting the Control-M Server and Control-M EM
• Sudo to Control-M EM user, and Control-M/Server user
• Access to OpenShift or Kubernetes cluster
• A valid account to access BMC Support Central / Electronic Product Distribution to download Control-M plugins.

Compatibility

Additionally to the Control-M components compatibility, the Control-M Automation API Command Line Interface (CLI) will not be available on the following platforms as they do not support a secure version of Node.js:

• Amazon Linux 2
• SUSE Linux 12
• Red Hat 7
• Oracle Linux 7
• CentOS 7

Please be sure that you are on a version compatible with the Control-M Automation API CLI.

Persistent Storage

Prepare a persistent Storage that will be used by Control-M Agents for storage on OpenShift or Kubernetes cluster. Basically, the persistent volume ensures that job data and Agent state are kept during pod restarts.

BMC recommends that you run multiple Agents on separate nodes in the namespace. The default is two Agents.

To support multiple Agents, the storage class (and underlying storage technology) must support ReadWriteMany access mode. The recommended storage size is minimum 5Gi per agent (by default 10Gi).

If NFS Storage Class is used, ensure that the UID and GID, which are Storage Class parameters for dynamic provisioning, are set to the following values:

• UID=1000  
• GID=0

Memory

By default, there could be some limitation in your cluster, please review the limitations on pods/containers memory.

For example, via the OpenShift console, adapt the maximum memory authorized to allow 2Gi of memory, which is the default value of Helm Control-M Agent installation.

Firewall

Some rules need to be configured on Firewall level, to authorize the agent to reach out to Control-M. The list of ports depends on your organization, in mine the ports opened where 7005-7015 + 13075.

There is no need to open the Firewall from server to agent, or to configure any ingress, as it uses the cluster API entry point.

When all prerequisites are ready, you can move forward to publish Plug-In, get the API Token, prepare and deploy the Control-M agent on Kubernetes. These steps will be shared in the next blog so stay connected

For further reading, please find all blogs around Control-M, and Kubernetes.

L’article Control-M for Kubernetes – Preparation est apparu en premier sur dbi Blog.

Control-M for Kubernetes enables you to execute Control-M job(s) to run one or more pods to completion in a Kubernetes cluster. This enables you to integrate Control-M capabilities, such as advanced scheduling criteria, status monitoring, and SLA management.

In fact, my story with Control-M began before Kubernetes existed, today, as a Control-M and Kubernetes expert I will be able to help you to understand and implement Control-M for Kubernetes. This first blog will be more a quick overview on these technologies and understand the implementation.

To be honest, you will need at least intermediate level on Control-M and Kubernetes to implement smoothly this solution. If you want to know more about Docker and Kubernetes, I would recommend this training.

Control-M Overview

Control-M is a workload automation solution that enables you to automate the scheduling and processing the business workflows across various platforms and applications from a single point of control. Nowadays, those platforms and application could be on VM, Kubernetes cluster, Cloud, etc.

Today, Control-M allow you to execute jobs in almost every platform, but what is a job?

A job is an execution unit, each job needs specific run information to be executed, such as scheduling criteria, post processing actions, and also job dependencies as shown in the following:

On “legacy” systems, a job could be a script or command, that is executed at the operating system level. On Kubernetes, a job take another role, which allow you at the end to deploy pods in Kubernetes. Let’s get a quick overview on Kubernetes and understand pods

Kubernetes Overview

Kubernetes is a portable, extensible, open source platform for managing containerized workloads and services, that facilitates both declarative configuration and automation. The smallest unit of a Kubernetes application is a pod!

A Kubernetes pod is a collection of one or more Linux containers. Any given pod can be composed of multiple, tightly coupled containers or just a single container.

Control-M for Kubernetes Overview

Now, we understood Control-M jobs and Kubernetes pods, let see how those will be connected.

The following diagram demonstrates how the components of Control-M for Kubernetes are incorporated into a Kubernetes cluster and how they enable you to run one or more pods to completion.

In this example, two Control-M/Agents are deployed as cluster pods.

This setup has the following main features:

• The Agent pods run as a StatefulSet, so that the hostname is identified consistently across pod restarts. This enables Control-M/Server to identify the Control-M/Agent continuously and consistently.
• Agent pods use a persistent volume, so that job data and the Control-M/Agent state are kept during pod restarts.
• The Agents belong to a host group, to ensure high availability and load balancing between the Agents.
• Agent to Server communication is set up as a persistent connection that is initiated by the Agent. This prevents the exposure of the Kubernetes cluster to outside connections.
• The Kubernetes plug-in adds a Kubernetes-type job to Control-M, which enables you to run one or more pods to completion in the Application namespace.

But how it works? which component allow us to create a pod inside Kubernetes?

In fact, it is mainly the role of the plug-in, which is responsible for the following stages in the execution of the Kubernetes-type job in Control-M:

• Starts a Kubernetes job entity that runs one or more Application pods in the Application namespace in the Kubernetes cluster.
• From Control-M, monitors the status of the job in Kubernetes until it ends when the Application pods finish running.
• Captures the pod logs for display in the Control-M job output.
• Deletes the Kubernetes job entity to free cluster resources.

Compatibility

Kubernetes

Control-M for Kubernetes is a generic solution for all Kubernetes-based container platforms. The following platforms were tested by BMC:

• RedHat OpenShift
• Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)
• Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Supported versions of Kubernetes: 1.26-1.29

Control-M

Before any action on your system, please insure that you have at least the following versions:

Take a look on the versions that should be installed to implement Control-M for Kubernetes:

Conclusion

We saw together what is Control-M, OpenShift, a quick overview on how Control-M for Kubernetes will be installed, how it will work in general, and the compatibility between all versions!

In the next blog, we will start the implementation of Control-M for Kubernetes.

In the meantime, to enrich your knowledge and be ready for the next step, here are some dbi services blogs around Control-M and Kubernetes.

L’article Control-M for Kubernetes – Overview est apparu en premier sur dbi Blog.

During a Control-M installation, you can face some issues, sometime it’s due to a lack of prerequisites ( Keep the best practices and be sure to follow the advice from BMC site experts, take a look on the installation documentation to fill all the prerequisite).

However it can be a singular issue ( not as explicit as a right access issue, space issue or a missing file in your OS library ).

We will see that, for my example I am using an Ubuntu OS from WSL, I have checked all the prerequisite before installation, you can check the steps to check your prerequisite below.

Check your prerequisites

As advised from the excellent BMC site “Before you install Control-M, verify that your operating system, processor, and database server are supported and have the correct amount of memory and diskspace.”

For a full list of requirements, see the Control-M 9.0.21.100 Release Notes here:

https://docs.bmc.com/docs/controlm/90201/control-m-9-0-21-100-release-notes-1164640372.html

Depending on your operating system, verify that your system meets one of the following requirements:

For me it is Linux x86_64 ( Ubuntu with enough RAM and disk space , so it should not be a problem )

• For Unix/Linux users

• For Windows users

If you want to have more go on the BMC site and see the system requirement part:

https://documents.bmc.com/supportu/9.0.21/en-US/Documentation/Control-M_full_installation_system_requirements.htm

Launching the setup file

After having checked and validated the prerequisites, we can start the installation file ( Maybe I will post a blog on Control-M V9.19 installation ,you can already check how to proceed by consulting it on BMC site )

• Few minutes after the beginning of the installation we have the below error message

“…failed installing PostgreSQL…”

• Indeed the perl script in charge of the installation is stopped and indicate you to check a specific file located here:

/Your_Control-M_Home/BMCINSTALL/pgserver_build_trace.log

• Let’s browse to this file and check what happened
• Here is the interesting part of the log:

GMTLOG: invalid value for parameter "lc_monetary": "en_US.ISO8859-1"
GMTLOG: invalid value for parameter "lc_numeric": "en_US.ISO8859-1"
GMTLOG: invalid value for parameter "lc_time": "en_US.ISO8859-1"

Seems to be a locale parameters issue.

Script also indicates that the posgresql.conf file locate under /home/controlm/pgsql/data/postgresql.conf is removed due to this error.

How to fix this issue

After some search and also helped by a BMC colleague ( thanks to him ) , we got the explanation : Regarding the OS configuration and locale language defined , this issue can occur.

• To fix it ,we have to update a specific file :

/home/controlm/pgsql/share/postgresql.conf.sample

• Edit this with your favorite text editor and remove the 3 lines below from the file:

"lc_monetary": "en_US.ISO8859-1"
"lc_numeric": "en_US.ISO8859-1"
"lc_time": "en_US.ISO8859-1"

• Don’t forget to save the file

Restart the setup script

• Now we can restart the launcher ( or press retry if you still have the installation window)

• As we see the installation continues and the database is installed, good news!

Conclusion

Now you know how to fix this issue related to PostgreSQL installation during Control-M installation.

Feel free to visit my other blogs and also don’t hesitate to share with me and take a look on other dbi bloggers.

L’article Control-M /EM: “Failed installing PostgreSQL database” error message est apparu en premier sur dbi Blog.

During a previous post, we have seen how to find the creator of a workload policy using BMC reports tool.

Indeed , this tool can be helpful to perform tasks such an audit of Control-M components, checking active peak usage , monitor quantitative resource ,sort jobs related to a specific host or hostgroup and many other things to retrieve

During your Control-M daily tasks, some requester can ask you to get statistics from their jobs ( for example to confirm their execution during the last month

Today we will see how to use it to generate a report for a specific job during a specific period

Connect to Control-M reports

• Start Control-M GUI
• In the tool pane select ” Control-M Reports “

• The Control-M report windows will display
• select the History part to get a report related to the job history
• Select add new report

• Open the history drop down menu in right pane

• Select jobs execution and click on add

Use the filters to make the report

• Use the filter tab to select the time range

• Select the job/Member name option to filter your report by jobname

• Choose the comparison field to find your job

Reminder:

• If you use the IS parameter you should enter the exact name of the job you are looking for ( wildcard will be used for the LIKE parameter )

• Once all the filters fields are filled click on refresh and see if job is displaying

• To select one or more jobs you can use the Like parameter and the * symbol

Note:

• Beware of the CAPS usage below an example to show you that the search is not case sensitive:
• Here when you do a refresh no job is displayed

• Add the columns you need

• In the first report we miss one field regarding the end time , let’s add it by using the column chooser

• Drag and drop it in the visible columns

• Perform a refresh, the end time column is now displaying

Generate report

You can now generate your report and save it

Go on the top right hand corner and click on generate

• Click on it : The report will be generated

• Select the file type ( CSV or PDF ) and save it

• You can now open your PDF report and see if all is displaying as expected

Open your file

• We can see that “End Time” field is here as expected

Optional : Save your template to load it later

• Export file format JSON for your template

• Select export and choose json format ( after that you will be able to load this template and even share it we will se how in another blog )

• Now suppose you have deleted your report you can Load the json file to have your saved template ( every user with this file can load this template, using sharing option can be easier to send this template to many users we will see that in another blog )

• Your template is loaded with all the filters you made inside.
• It’s now displaying

• You can save it again or update it (for example changing the time range field)

Conclusion

That’s it you know to generate a report of your jobs and you can modulate your requests inside to display the field you want

You can use Control-M report to sort many types of information related to yours jobs and also to monitor the activity

Another interesting feature of the Control-M reports tool is that we can share our templates with other users, we will se that in a coming Blog

Feel free to share with us the dbi bloggers and also check my other posts

I hope it helped you to discover this tool and that it will give you many ideas to use it!

L’article Control-M /EM : Generate a job report in few clicks! est apparu en premier sur dbi Blog.

Control-M gives us many ways to get info about jobs , for example by checking their definition , or checking their execution log or the Alert viewer,checking their execution their scheduling and so on.

There is also ways to monitor other Control-M components such as resources,database update,communication between Control-M components..

Everything depends of what you need but you will probably find your information by using tools given by Control-M

Today we will see how to get the creator of a workload policy and also creation date

What is a Workload Policy?

Here is a definition from BMC site

“Workload Policies enable you to control, manage, and balance the workload on Control-M resources and hosts. A Workload Policy uses filters to group together jobs and applies rules to those jobs to limit their impact on the workload”

Typically I use a workload policy to hold specific jobs during a specific period , for example for maintenance matters.

You have many possibilities to use Control-M’s workload policy, which makes it a very powerful tool for your daily tasks.

Create a Workload Policy

As a reminder let’s see how to create update and delete your workload policies

You can also review some interesting topics regarding it by checking my colleague Marc Wagner’s blog and also my other blogs related to Workload Policy here.

Create a WP

• Connect to Control-M and go to the planning part

• Select the tool tab

• Click on the “New” icon

• Define your Workload policy
  • Fill the fields regarding what you need
  • Enter the Workload policy name
  • Select the Workload policy State ( do it at the end of the configuration )

What is possible to do with Workload policy

• Below the fields an description that you can use for your workload policy

• Below an example of Workload policy

Here I have restricted job’s execution between a specific time window ( from 9h15 to 23h30 NO defined in the Job Name/Mem Name field will run )

As you can see you can play on many ways with Workload policies , maybe will go deeper during another Blog post

Regarding Workload policy Validation

• Note that you have to enter at least one field in the filters to be able to save your configuration

• You will also be careful about the spaces and blank characters

• Maximum length limitation

You can’t exceed 20 characters when you define your Workload Policy name

• You must enter at least one policy filter to able to save

Delete a WP

• Select the workload policy you want to delete and click on the cross icon in the top pane

• Validate deletion ( no need to click on the refresh icon )

What is BMC reports

Some info from the excellent BMC Site:

The Control-M Reports tool enables you to create and generate ad hoc reports using data collected from your environment, as described in Creating a Report Template. Control-M provides default categories that include report templates that you can use to view specific information and generate reports, as described in Generating a Report.

You can use the report templates in the following categories:

• Active: Collects data regarding active jobs or other Control-M data from the active environment, such as alerts or audits.
• SLA Management: Collects data for execution status, service name and status, slack time, and total number of SLA Management jobs.
• Definition: Collects definition-related information from the Planning domain regarding jobs, folders, and events.
• History: Job execution-related reports.
• File Transfer: Collects data about file transfers inside your organization.

I will probably make other topics on BMC Reports as it is a powerful tool combined with the audit option to get a lot of info on each Control-M components and also to generate many types of Reports.

For our case it will only be used to show who is the workload policy creator.

Use BMC report

Enable audit

First of all we have to enable audit in the Control-M Configuration Manager ( tick the boxes one for enabling annotations and one fore enabling audit )

• Select system parameters

• Select Audit and Annotation ( tick the 2 boxes if you want to get more element)

• Don’t forget to define the automatic cleanup for your Audit

Connect to BMC Report

• Go to the BMC report URL related to your Control-M server

Note:

For testing Purpose we will use 2 users ( my user and a test user to create the Workload policy then I will check from my user or an admin user if I can catch the username who created this policy )

• Connect with the first user to the Control-M Report

Create your Report

• Once connected you can start to create a report
• Select the Active pane

• Click on Add New Report then click on Add button

• Select Audit in the right pane

Create a Report to have WP information

For the demonstration purpose on how to use the reporting tool to get info on Workload policy creation, I created a Workload policy with a test user.

Then I will connect with my user (or an admin user) to see if Workload policy information are displaying

Create the Workload Policy with the first user

We can see:

• The creation date
• The last updated
• The user who made the update

We will note the details of the workload policy created named workload _for_audit

Update the Workload Policy with the second user

Now I will open a new Control-M Client Window with my user

I update the Workload policy description by adding a dot and save the parameters.

We can see that:

• User name is displayed in the “Updated By” column

• The last Update with date and time

Create the report to display info on Workload Policy creation ( and update )

• Define the time range to have info regarding last days

• Select for example last 1 or 2 days ( I have created a WP few minutes before with the Test username so we should be able to find it )

• Select Active Network

• Choose the audit operation related to Workload policy creation

• Click on Preview and Refresh to display users who created the Workload Policy

That’s it !You can now see the Workload Policy creator and the creation date

• For our specific case , we can select All in the audit operation drop-down menu to also display the Workload Policy updates

Now we see that I made some changes with my user na******* ( check the username date and audit operation to have all the info.)

Note:

You also have the host name, which is even better

What else?

You can also directly generate a report and send it later or re-use it for your audit operations.

You can also share your reports with other users ( also the reports templates )

We will probably see that in a new blog!

You have so much components you can monitor with this tool, it’s absolutely great !

Conclusion

You now have the keys to investigate deeper on Control-M and have a good way to monitor action done on your infrastructure

Control-M offers many possibilities to sort what you need, here we found who is the Workload Policy Creator but you can have loads of options.

You can for example find who forced/ordered a job or who deleted a folder, we will see that maybe next time.

For me moment I invite you to check my other blogs and also take a look at dbi bloggers to share with us some knowledge and also some tips and tricks on you favorite tools !

L’article Control-M/EM : Find who created a Workload Policy est apparu en premier sur dbi Blog.

Hi everybody , sometimes users make and develop their own job and manage the whole cycle of life of their folder.

But It can happened that they face issues and contact the administrator for some support.

Here is one case regarding job ordering , to investigate we will proceed by steps.

How to order a job from another Job

User may want to trigger another specific job after its current job completion see below an example:

To proceed, you must use the on-do actions in your job to order the other one after a specific job status ( Job ended OK , not OK and more)

• First ,select the Actions tab and define your On-Do Action

• Then select the job statement to trigger your next job

• Once done ,let’s define the job ordering by using the do part:

• Add the job you want to trigger and the corresponding folder ( usually it is the same but everything is depending of your job definition and your needs)

Note:

For me job ordering from on-do action is not best practice.

Indeed it is difficult to investigate and understand the workflow easily without using the in and out conditions.

I therefore advise you to use this method with caution and only if you have no choice.

Access to folder is not allowed to user

After this reminder on how to trigger a job from a current job ,we will see what was wrong with message found in the Control-M Agent log

It says the user has no access to the folder from where the job has to be executed .

So it seems to be a right access matter?

Note:

For confidentiality I renamed user folder as folder name and testuser as username to demonstrate how to solve this case

As we use ctmsec and authorization we can check if all is correctly defined to access the folder and trigger the job

The “run as” user field in the job is defined with username testuser

• Let’s see if testuser is correctly defined in the cmtsec part

Connect to Control-M Configuration Manager and check if the run as is correctly set

• Click on Control-M server icon

• Go to the ctmsec and check in the authorized AJF part if user is defined

• Here we see that the user TESTUSER is defined in CAPS whereas in the job it is defined in Lowercase

• Let’s define it in lowercase and check if job is ordering correctly

Result

• When trying to order the job after the current job completion we still got the permission message !

Explanation:

That’s because cmtsec is checking for the user authorization to be able to order the job, so user testuser must be defined User/Group Part in ctmsec, to be able to order the next job

Define the user in “User/Group” Part

• Click on the plus icon and define the user
• Add it to the corresponding group
• Add a description

• Click on OK and check if user is now member of the group:

Test again if job is ordered

• By restarting the job ,we can see in its log that following job is ordered successfully

Job on-do-order-job-2 is forced by on-do-order-job-1 as expected

Note about this case:

Usually when ctmsec is defined correctly you will have some restriction message pop-up asking for sufficient rights to perform the order ( or the check-in ) below an example

In our case , when the job was defined ( to order an other job ) ctmsec was only checking for the first job “on-do-order-job-1” requirements , which were completed successfully so the folder was able to be checked in and job was allowed to be ordered …..but not the second on in the on-do action !

The on-do-order-job-1 user needed rights to access and trigger the on-do-order-job-2 and it was checked only at the moment where the job tried to trigger the on-do-order-job-2

So in other words cmstec was bypassed during the job definition

To sum up:

Bear in mind that ctmsec is case sensitive ,so when defining your user , be careful of that ( I made some job tests switching with testuser and TESTUSER ( depending of what is defined in ctmsec job will be or not ordered )and it confirmed that.

If your job can not order the following job in on-do action be sure that the user in the first job is defined and have the rights to access the folder of the second job :User/Group Part in ctmsec

Note:

You can add a wildcard (*) if you have user defined like for example usertest1, usertest2, usertest3 just user usertest*

Conclusion

You know now how to solve this specific case , I hope it will help you if you face the same issue , Control-M has many security layers so you must keep in mind that you have to investigate step by steps to see where is the problem.

Of course Control-M log messages are very helpful and will give you precious clues ,but sometime you need to go deeper to find the solution , as you know that it’s a right issue but you have to find where it is defined in ctmsec or even in user authorization part

We will see that maybe in another blog , I invite you to check dbi bloggers and also my previous blogs to share with us some cool tips and tricks

L’article Control-M/EM : Access to folder is not allowed to user est apparu en premier sur dbi Blog.

Hello everyone, as a Control-M user and job creator you will have to work on the planning domain and perform many tasks on jobs, from defining them to testing them and finally ordering them on the monitoring domain

How to Order a job

As a reminder we will quickly check the different ways to order a job with the default options

Order a job from the monitoring domain

• Select the Control-M server folder jobname

Note:

Note that you will see the option to order the job with hold status disabled, we will see how to enable it later

Order a job from the planning domain

• From the order icon

Go on the planning domain and select the order icon

• From the job itself

right click on the job and select order in the contextual menu

For both methods you will have this pop-up window

Next step is to click on the Order button to order your job ( this is the default configuration )

How to Order a job with hold status

In some case , you will want to order your jobs on monitoring domain using the hold status ( sometime to cross check or validate last modifications before running them )

To do that ,you must manually tick the box Hold and click on the order button

How to Order a job with hold status always on

Now for some reason( for me it is to be safe when ordering a job as I am used to double check my ordered jobs) we can activate a Control-m option which is not defined by default, it is the “OrderForceWithHoldAlwaysOn“

First of all ,connect to the CCM and to EM system parameters

go to the advanced part

In the name part type “hold“

• You will have the corresponding line displaying
• When you check the default value you can see that it is set to 0
• you can also check the description of this option

Next step will be to activate this option:

• Update the value to 1
• Don’t forget to save the change
• As the refresh method is automatic you will not need to recycle any component

• Check if change is taken account in the planning domain

• Check if change is taken account in the monitoring domain

• check the job ordered

As we can see , we ordered the job on hold status as expected

Troubleshooting

• What if your change is not taken in account?

I had this specific case where I enabled the hold option but when trying to order my jobs the box was still unticked,also that is how to proceed:

• First method:

Tick/untick the box manually , then go out of the job

Try to order it again, it should work

• If it is still not working:

Tick/untick the box manually and order the job

You must therefore perform this task so subsequently jobs will take this change into account.

Conclusion:

Now you know how to order your jobs with the hold status, it can be useful for your daily work and it is a feature you may not know so I hope this blog was helpful.

Also don’t forget to follow my blogs and the dbi bloggers to have more tips an tricks on your favorite software

L’article Control-M/EM: Order a job with the “hold” option always on est apparu en premier sur dbi Blog.

Hello everybody,sometimes users can request us to import their job definition using xml specific file.It is quite an easy task to perform but in rare cases you can encounter some issues.When Control-m is checking the XML schema verification to import it in the planning domain you can have an windows error message explaining that there is a configuration in the xml file,let’s see what kind of message it is and how to solve it.

How to export/import the job definitions

Import the “problematic” xml file

OUTPUT:

The error message in the popup window is clear: there is problem in the email message(character format?)

The line and the columns is indicated in the windows it is the line 47 and column 140 we will check that by using a file text editor

CAUSE:

Usually this error message corresponds to the case in which the DO MAIL action contains 0 character for the message part.
In our case the DO MAIL action contains the message body but is still not working

Check the corresponding line on a file editor

Let’s open the xml file in a file editor and go to the line 47 as indicated by the popup window.

We can clearly see that the message part is not empty, also we see some numbers at the beginning of the message ( number that are not part of the message I have input in the text field )

After some search on the excellent Support Center of BMC, I found out that this is this specific number referring to the character length of the message which is causing this import issue.

It should correspond to the message length ( Here with have number 0002 which is not corresponding to the text length which I voluntarily added for this test purpose )

The number of characters of our message ” Hi this is a test for the do mail notification ” is 47 chars including spaces.

Update the xml file with corresponding values

So next step is to update the number to the corresponding length

Note:

Don’t forget to take in account the spaces in your message ,also bare in mind that you have to keep the 0 before the number otherwise it cannot work.

Action to do in our example:

Substitute 0002 by 0047

Import the updated xml file

Now we have imported the file with updated values we can try to import it an see if it is now working

As you can see the folder/job is now imported successfully

Check the do mail part in the job, this is working our message is displaying as expected

If you have still the import message

Unfortunately if you still have the import issue even after updating the character number at the beginning of your message , you will have to delete the message body in the related job ( save it in a notepad for example )

Next step will be to import your xml file without the message in the do mail part,after that the import will be successful.

Note that the message field will be empty

You will of course need to add the message manually in your jobs on Control-M planning

Once done ,export your job definition from the planning domain to have a compliant xml file

Result:

Your export will now work ,you can try to import it again in the planning domain to check if the importation error is fixed.

Note:

As checked also with BMC we don’t exactly know what is the root cause of this bug , it can be corrupted at anytime ( during an export of the folder or even when you edit your xml export in the file editor) also it is not detected during migration as the migration toolkit doesn’t check this specific error,unfortunately that means that you can keep this issue even after an upgrade if you don’t keep out.

So the only way to solve it is to update manually the xml file to get the correct character number in the message or to do the workaround with the empty field.

Conclusion

Now you know how to fix this folder import issue , the popup windows gives precious info about where the error is located , you just have to open the xml file in your favorite text editor and make a quick investigation

I hope it will be helpful and also don’t forget to follow my other blogs and also those form my colleagues on dbi bloggers to have more new tips and tricks on your favorites software

L’article Control-M/EM : Import error conflict message “The format of do notify message is not valid” est apparu en premier sur dbi Blog.

Sometimes you need to have information about the execution of Control-M tasks and logs.

In particular, when you need to do research, you can use the history area (history pane).

In a previous job, I encountered a problem when I tried to load the job history pane. This was because our number of jobs was increasing significantly and we were not able to load jobs for our surveys.

This is a well known issue but let’s do a quick reminder and test to show how it works,it can also be useful for those who never had this problem.

History pane

On the Control-M GUI select the history pane

You can now try to load all the jobs from all folder or use a filter to load only a certain amount of job or a specific application* ( if you do that you will probably be able to avoid the max history loading issue we will explain that later)

When we load the archive from 01/02/2023 we get this famous issue.It explains us that we have a limitation to load the jobs form this archive viewpoint.

We see also that the total job number is 1105 jobs.We will now go to the CCM and check what’s wrong.

Check CCM parameters

Once connected to the CCM we will look for the parameters to update the maximum number of jobs loaded in the archive viewpoint:

For that you must right-click on EM SERVER component and select System parameters:

Select the “Advanced” Part:

In the search bar type the following value LimitArchiveJobsInMem

Check the Value number: the max defined ( for our test purpose ) is 900 whereas the default value is 40 000 that is the reason why we get this display error

Update the Value

I set the value to its default ( usually when you get this loading issue, it’s because your job number loaded was above this value for example 50 000 jobs in the archive,so in that let’s increase it to 60 000 or 80 000)

Note:

As the refresh type parameter is set to automatic there is need to restart any component to be taken in account.

Load the archive viewpoint

Now we have updated the Control-M EM parameters, we will check if it is possible to display the jobs in the history pane.

As you can see it is now possible to load the archive in order to check jobs outputs and logs

Note:

As said before you can have some case when you will not face this problem even if you have more jobs than the limit defined in the CCM parameters:

When you load only one or few jobs ( less than the limit ) fo that you can you the customize filter to load the jobs to be checked:

Then you can select the folder or the job to load instead of loading the whole plan of the given DAY

Result, if your folder has less than the job limit configured for the LimitArchiveJobsInMem ,you should be able to see it.

Conclusion

Now you know how to quickly fix this display problem, I must admit it’s been a while since I last saw this error and also I had forgotten the exact parameter to update

So now it’s in a blog, so you won’t have to investigate to find the solution.

Don’t forget to visit the dbi bloggers to share knowledge and tips with us

L’article Control-M/EM Failed to open archive viewpoint est apparu en premier sur dbi Blog.