IT21292: EMBEDDED MFT AGENT DOES NOT TRACK TRANSFERS FAILING DUE TO FULL TRANSFER QUEUE

APAR status

• Closed as program error.

Error description

• When initiating an MFT transfer from the embedded MFT agent,
  transfers will be ignored if the queued transfers are full.
  This does not currently trigger an exception so this lack of
  transfer goes unhandled.
  
  Update:
  An enhancement has been delivered to a customer to potentially
  alleviate this behavior. Optional "FTE transfer tracking" has
  been added to the broker to allow the number of active transfers
  of the embedded agent to be tracked. This allows any transfer
  that would potentially be over the limit of the agent to be
  backed out, allowing logic to be put in place to handle retries.
  As can be seen in the setup instructions below, a subscription
  to the agents log topic needs to be created from the broker to
  the coordination queue manager, this is to allow Transfer
  Complete messages to be captured by the broker, removing said
  transfer ids from the list of current transfers.
  
  SETUP
  To enable this new tracking feature, some setup is required:
  
  1) Set the envvar MQSI_ENABLE_FTE_TRACKING=1
  
  2) If you are not using the broker queue manager as the
  coordination queue manager, create a .properties file containing
  the following:
  	hostname=myRemoteComputer.ibm.com
  	port=1414
  	channel=SYSTEM.DEF.SVRCONN
  Where:
  -The hostname is the hostname that would be used
  to access the host machine. This could be an IP address, or a
  DNS.
  
  -The port is the LISTENER.TCP port of the coordination queue
  manager.
  
  -The channel is the SVRCONN channel of the queue manager. By
  default,
  this will be SYSTEM.DEF.SVRCONN. This will be visible in the
  channels
  of the coordination queue manager in MQ Explorer.
  
  3) Go to
  $MQSI_WORKPATH/components/<broker>/<eg_UUID>/config/WMQFTE/
  config/<EG_NAME>/coordination.properties and add the following
  property:
  	fteTrackingPropertiesFile=C:/ABSOLUTE/PATH/TO/TRACKING/PROP
  ERTIES
  
  4) Restart the broker
  
  If the fte tracking has been setup correctly, a new subscription
  with the eguuid as the name will have been created in  the
  coordination queue manager. If this does not exist, a property
  in
  the tracking.properties file may be incorrect. Or you may have
  used backslashes in the fteTrackingPropertiesFile property in
  coordination.properties, where you should have used forward.
  
  TESTING
  
  1) Test the basic tracking of the enhancement
  
  - Enable service trace
  - Start transferring a small batch of files, eg 5-10
  - When these files complete, stop the service trace.
  - Inspect the service trace files. When a transfer is sent, it
  is added to the list of transfer ids in a registerTransferID
  method. Search for these occurances, and the value of "Number of
  Active Transfers" should
  increase with each (assuming transfers are queued fast enough
  for an overlap). When transfer complete messages are received
  from the coordination queue manager, this "Number of Active
  Transfers" will reduce. This is output during a parseAgentLogXML
  method. The best way to view this is to search for all
  occurences of "Number of Active Transfers". This number should
  increase with every register, and decrease with every transfer
  completion.
  
  2) Test the backout capability of the enhancement
  
  - Change the maxSourceTransfers value of agent.properties to 1.
  - Change the maxQueuedTransfers value of agent.properties to 3.
  - Restart the broker.
  - Open an event log monitor, for example Windows Event Viewer.
  - Start transferring a batch of files 10+
  - The event viewer should have a number of BIP messages from the
  transfer queue being full. For every transfer that was backed
  out, there will be a BIP3473W saying:
  	BIP3473W: ( AGENT.NAME ) Failed to send a request to start
  an FTE transfer on agent ''AGENT.NAME'' because the agent has
  reached its max queued transfers limit. Max Source
  Transfers=''1'', Max Queued 		Transfers=''3''.
  &circ;30/08/2017 18:11:46]
  - Depending on your message flow, these backed out files should
  be present in the backout directory of the input node, and the
  total between the backout and the output directory should total
  your input
  number of transfers.
  

Local fix

• NA
  

Problem summary

• ****************************************************************
  USERS AFFECTED:
  All users of IBM Integration Bus version 10 and App Connect
  Enterprise version 11 using the FT Nodes.
  
  
  Platforms affected:
  MultiPlatform
  
  ****************************************************************
  PROBLEM DESCRIPTION:
  <span style="background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255)">When
  initiating an MFT transfer from the embedded MFT agent,
  </span><span style="background-color:rgb(255, 255,
  255)">transfers will be ignored by the FTE agent if the queued
  transfers are full.    </span>
  <span style="background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255)">This does not
  currently trigger an exception in the message flow so the
  transfer is silently discarded. </span>
  

Problem conclusion

• It is now possible to enable to FTE nodes to monitor the number
  of outstanding transfers. This feature can be enabled using the
  environment variable:
  
  <span style="background-color:rgb(255, 255,
  255)">MQSI_ENABLE_FTE_TRACKING=1</span>
  
  
  When set in the Integration Nodes / Servers profile environment
  this causes the node to issue the following BIP message if a
  transfer is attempted while the transfer queue is full:
  
  <span style="background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255)">BIP3473W: (
  AGENT.NAME ) Failed to send a request to start an FTE transfer
  on agent ''AGENT.NAME'' because the agent has reached its max
  queued transfers limit. Max Source Transfers=''1'', Max Queued
  Transfers=''3''.</span>
  
  A restart of the Integration Node / Server is required for
  changes to take effect.
  
  ---------------------------------------------------------------
  The fix is targeted for delivery in the following PTFs:
  
  Version    Maintenance Level
  v10.0      10.0.0.19
  v11.0      11.0.0.7
  
  The latest available maintenance can be obtained from:
  http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=849&uid=swg27006041
  
  If the maintenance level is not yet available,information on
  its planned availability can be found on:
  http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=849&uid=swg27006308
  ---------------------------------------------------------------
  

Temporary fix

Comments

APAR Information

• APAR is sysrouted FROM one or more of the following:

• APAR is sysrouted TO one or more of the following:

Fix information

• Fixed component name

  INTEGRATION BUS

• Fixed component ID

  5724J0540

Applicable component levels