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Checking the health of arrays

  • Article

Updated: April 8, 2010

Applies To: Unified Access Gateway

After deploying multiple Forefront UAG servers in an array or configuring a Web farm, you can monitor their status on a daily basis using the Forefront UAG Web Monitor. You can also use the Web monitor to monitor the state of load balanced array members after load balancing array traffic using Forefront UAG integrated network load balancing (NLB).

The following procedures provide instructions on:

  • Accessing Web Monitor

  • Monitoring the status of arrays and farms

  • Monitoring the state of load balanced array members

  • Managing load balanced array members

Accessing Web Monitor

Note

Any user with administrator privileges on the local server or array member can access Web Monitor.

To access Web Monitor

  1. From the Forefront UAG Management console, on the Admin menu, click Web Monitor.

  2. On the taskbar, click Start, click All Programs, click Microsoft Forefront UAG, and then click Forefront UAG Web Monitor.

  3. To open Web Monitor from any computer located in the Forefront UAG server network, connect using port 50002 on the Forefront UAG server. For example, if the IP address of the Forefront UAG server is 192.168.1.45, specify the following URL in the browser address bar of the computer from which you want to connect: https://192.168.1.45:50002.

Monitoring the status of arrays and farms

The following sections describe how:

  • To monitor an array

  • To monitor the status of load balanced nodes

  • To verify the status of load balanced array members

  • To monitor the status of a farm

To monitor an array

  1. On the array manager, in the Forefront UAG Management console, click the Admin menu, click Web Monitor, and then in Array Monitor, click Current Status.

  2. Check that all of the servers in the array appear in the list, and display a Synchronization Status of synched.

Note

You can perform additional monitoring on an on-demand basis in the following scenarios:

  • After activating your Forefront UAG configuration—On the taskbar, click Start, click All Programs, click Microsoft Forefront UAG, and then click Forefront UAG Activation Monitor. In the left pane, each array member should be displayed with a check mark.

  • After creating an array, or changing an array member to an array manager—On the array manager, open the Forefront UAG Management console. On the Admin menu, click Array Management to open the Array Management Wizard. Make sure that the Current server status is Array manager.

  • After adding an array member—On the array member, open the Forefront UAG Management console. The Array Management Wizard opens automatically. On the Configure Array Settings page of the wizard, check that the Current server status for each server is Array member.

To monitor the status of load balanced nodes

  1. In the Forefront UAG Management console, click the Admin menu, and then click Web Monitor.

  2. In Web Monitor, click Current Status in the Array Monitor node.

    One of the following statuses will be displayed for each array member:

    • Converged─The array member is acting as a load balanced server.

    • Draining─The array member is in the process of going offline. After draining completes, current connections to the server will be handled by another load balanced server without interruption.

      Note

      Servers that are completely drained continue to show a status of Draining.

    • Stopped─The array member is not acting as a load balanced server.

    • Suspended─The array member is not acting as a load balanced server. After the array member restarts, it remains in a suspended status.

    • Unknown─There is no connection to the array member server, and it is not participating in load balancing. Note that when polling for NLB, unavailable array members that are not drained are set as Offline. An array member with an Offline status that becomes available does not join the load balanced server set automatically; you must explicitly select the Resume action for the server.

    • Converging─The convergence process occurs when a node is in transition from Offline to Converged. In addition, when the polling mechanism senses that a node is offline, the remaining array nodes converge to cover for the offline node.

Note

  • If the array manager is down, you must use the Windows NLB monitor because you cannot see the NLB status using the Web Monitor.

  • If there is a communications problem with one of the nodes or if its array status is not synced, the NLB monitor will show status "Unknown".

  • You cannot change the NLB status for a node that has a status of "Unknown". If you want to change the NLB status of such a node, you must access it using the Windows NLB monitor and disable it from there.

To verify the status of load balanced array members

  1. On the array manager, on the Admin menu, click Web Monitor, and then in Array Monitor, click Current Status.

  2. Check that all of the servers in the array appear in the list, and that each node is Converged and Synched.

  3. After changing the NLB status of a node, it is recommended that you confirm the status change using the Windows Network Load Balancing Monitor. On each array member, on the taskbar, click Start, click Administrative tools, click the Network Load Balancing Manager, click the NLB cluster, and then make sure that the NLB host interface Status is Converged.

The main differences between the Web Monitor Array monitor node and the Windows NLB manager are the following:

  • Web Monitor provides the status for all nodes in an array, and Windows NLB manager provides the status of the local node.

  • Web Monitor will not function if the array manager is down.

To monitor the status of a farm

  1. On the array manager, on the Admin menu, click Web Monitor, and then in Farm Monitor, click Current Status.

  2. Verify that for all servers in the farm, Connectivity is Verified, and State is Running. Any other status may indicate that there is a problem with one of the farm servers.

    Note

    When one of the servers in the Web farm is not functioning correctly, the Status displays Partially Ready.

Monitoring the state of load balanced array members

To access the Web Monitor, obtain the credentials for the administrator account of the local server, and input them each time you access Web Monitor. Note that you must repeat the selected action for each array member. Then, monitor load balanced servers as follows.

To monitor the state of load balanced nodes

  1. In the Forefront UAG Management console, click the Admin menu, and then click Web Monitor.

  2. In Web Monitor, click Current Status in the Load Balancing Monitor node. One of the following states will be displayed for each array member:

    • Converged─The array member is acting as a load balanced server.

    • Draining─The array member is in the process of going offline. After draining completes, current connections to the server will be handled by another load balanced server without interruption.

      Note

      Servers that are completely drained continue to show a status of Draining.

    • Stopped─The array member is not acting as a load balanced server.

    • Suspended─The array member is not acting as a load balanced server. After the array member restarts, it remains in a suspended status.

    • Offline─There is no connection to the array member server, and it is not participating in load balancing. Note that when polling for NLB, unavailable array members that are not drained are set as offline. An offline node that becomes available does not join the load balanced server set automatically. You must explicitly select the Resume action for the server.

    • Converging─The convergence process occurs when a node is in transition from Offline to Converged. In addition, when the polling mechanism senses that a node is offline, the remaining array nodes converge to cover for the offline node.

Managing load balanced array members

Note

If you are using Web farm load balancing on your backend servers, and you want to restart a Forefront UAG server that was taken down for maintenance, make sure that the most recent action that you performed on the array members, such as draining, is also performed on this server.

To manage load balanced nodes

  1. In the Forefront UAG Management console, click the Admin menu, and then click Web Monitor.

  2. In Web Monitor, click Current Status in the Load Balancing Monitor node.

  3. In the details pane, select the array server you want to manage, and then in the Action drop-down menu, select one of the following:

    • Start─To specify that an array node should starting acting as a load balanced server.

    • Stop─To specify that the array node should stop acting as a load balanced server.

    • Drain Stop─To start draining the server. Before taking offline a server in a load-balanced array, you should drain it. When draining, the server will not accept new connections, but will wait until current endpoint connections are completed before ending its participation in the load-balancing process.

    • Suspend─To specify that the array member should stop acting as a load balanced node.

    • Resume─To specify that the array member should resume activity as a load balanced node.

    • Cancel─To cancel a drain or resume action in process.