DB2-ATS not releasing DB2 Transaction Log Files

[Former Member]

Hello Colleagues

Hope some of you can assist with any advice or point us in the right direction:

Some background:

We installed Solution Manager 7.1 recently and before all of this we were fine in respect of transaction logging on DB2 etc.

We have ECC 6.0, 720 Kernel, and DB2 V9.7.5 on all our Managed and managing systems.

Before we installed solution manager and configured monitoring and alerting all our managed systems were running DB2 V9.7.0

After configuring monitoring and partially setting up earlywatch alerts we found out that we were running an unsupported db and sap combo.

So we upgraded all the databases on the satellite systems to DB2 V9.7.5 (FP5) to fix the issue above.

We also implemented all the DB2 9.7.5 settings according to the central SAP Note.

Also we upgraded the satellite systems with ST-Tools (ST / ST-API) to ensure we eliminated all other issues, ran the RTCCTOOL on all systems and ready to go.

All diagnostics agents were installed with 7.30 as they did not exist. That is all configured no problems with that. We are able to start and stop at will from the Agent Framework in Solution Manager.

We have all the Solution Manager Central Notes along with the central DB Notes all of the latest version.

Problem:

Once we started the monitoring from the managed system (Solution Manager) we have noticed that DB2 Admin Task Scheduler in DBA Cockpit holds all the transaction log files as it is always the oldest application,  forcing the application via DB2 CLI releases all the log files, and system logging returns to normal with application id then being 0. After a while it returns and this leaves us in a sticky situation as we could reach transaction log full on our Production System.

We run online backups with logs every night, so we were expecting the logs to be all normal the next day but not so.

Investigation:

We have stopped all the extractors from the extractor framework in Solution Manager, removed the RFC's from Solution Manager (SM59), disabled the backend update in the collector configuration on DBA Cockpit, removed the System from Technical monitoring, still the DB2ATS runs with UOW executing and holds all the transaction logs until full.

Some Observations:

We initially configured solution manager with the previous 9.7.0 on Development before the upgrade to 9.7.5 and all seemed to work fine, but the early-watch report on the unsupported DB led us to upgrading to DB2 9.7.5.

At the time when doing the initial investigation when the problems started was that collector configuration on the DEV System was set to External Scheduler instead of DB2 Admin Scheduler, along-with an option to Migrate to DB2 Admin scheduler which we chose supposedly being available after the upgrade to 9.7.5. I suppose thats when the problems started, as we experienced DB2 transaction log full on all our downstream managed systems after that.

We also have intermittent issues with SAPTOOLS running forever on the Solution Manager SM50 processes and this sometimes leads to massive CPU activity if not manually killing them via SM50 or dpmon.

Some Questions:

• KeepFenced= YES / NO (DB2 Parameter set correct or incorrect leads to confusion even on some SAP SCN Threads), being a relative newbie to SAP DB2 I am also not sure whether this parameter is correct in our environment.
• Part of our investigation also pointed us to BI Reporting and extractors not working, deleting the extractors, removing the monitoring, doing the managed configuration again, and seeing if it works, no such luck.
• Is there perhaps anyone that could provide a sample working configuration of their DB2 V9.7.5 config perhaps running on SLES Linux 10 SP2 so that we can compare against. Thanks in advance.
• Is there a way of doing central monitoring  in Solution Manager of alerts via RZ20 like in the old days were Wily Introscope and Diagnostics were not available, i.e. no requirements on all these above features, all we are looking for is a simple way of monitoring our satellite systems and these CCMS alerts to get propagated to the central Solution Manager system with notifications via email and SMS.

Immediate Problem:

Right now we would like to stop all monitoring of our Production System until we can resolve the problem on Development.

Having removed the monitoring, deleting the extractors, removed the SM59 RFC Dest and as well as removing the users on the target client in production, DB2ATS still runs and holds all the transaction logs.

Right now as a work-around we are manually forcing the application id from DB2 CLI to release the logging. We have since configured large logging so that we can survive a few days.

The last step would be to disconnect the systems from SLD.

I cannot remove the Production System from the Central SLD (Which is on Solution Manager) with the associated Production Portal as this would cause the Production Portal to stop if the connection to the Central SLD does not exist.

Thanks in advance, hope someone has experienced and resolved this issue previously and could assist us with some sage advice.

Ironically it seems that we are monitoring the monitoring system all the time and this is the system which supposed to be safeguarding our SAP Environment

Thanks so much, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Solly

[Former Member]

Hi Solly,

You mentioned after swiched off techincal monitoring too

still DB2-ATS collecting logs till it full....

The issue might be with your Data base, not because of the extraction jobs, check the space in the dir log, or check with DB side parameter releated issues, DB2 transaction log full, is the common issue in upgrades too. Not exactly sure this is the problem with solution manager.

more over new technical monitoring based on SMD agent, not make any such issues.

And other thing, Yes you can use RZ20 CCMS monitoring, it is still available as same as in 7.0 Ehp1. Just use the system monitoring workcenter  instead of proceeding solution manager.

Please check and update.

Thanks

Jansi

[Former Member]

Hi Jansi

Thank you very much for the reply, much appreciated.

What i have found in the interim is that we were able to apply all the standard db2 9.7 parameters using the dba cockpit tool and that gave us 1 deviation which we corrected.

We are now currently monitoring but the db-ats process still always holds the oldest application id, therefore not releasing the transaction logs.

It seems with the initial setup of the managed system config the solution manager has injected the jobs on the managed systems, we have also stopped the extractors and deleted all the rfc's but no use as these extractor jobs have already been injected into the backend managed systems.

1274287 sap note which describes requirements for managing and managed system is not released from sap so it makes it difficult.

You mentioned standard rz20 monitoring is still available, can you please explain a little more, is that configuration that would we be able to do without setting up connection to Wily and not setting up the database extractors etc. All we require is manage ABAP Backends single stack systems for now and we would like the rz20 alerts in the managed system to propagate or transfer the alerts to Solution Manager. Would we require diagnostic agents for that? Connection to Wily and DB Extractors as well?

Thanks for the reply, much appreciated.