Behavior of the FOC adapter

To make sure your system runs well using an FOC adapter, more information is provided to better understand the behavior of the FOC adapter in combination with System Automation Application Manager.

Before you install and use the FOC adapter, consider the following aspects:
  • The FOC adapter runs as a Windows service. This service logs on with the user account you specify during installation. All interactions with Microsoft FOC are performed on behalf of this user account.

  • If authentication is enforced in the FOC adapter configuration you must specify an arbitrary valid user account with credentials in order to establish a session with the adapter. The user account and password combination is checked on the system where the FOC adapter you are trying to contact is currently running. For this reason you can define and use a Windows domain user account for this purpose. When being prompted for the user account name you must specify the user account in a way which uniquely describes its scope, for example to show which domain the user account belongs to. For domain user accounts you can specify the user account as domain\user or user@domain.

    Nevertheless, the FOC adapter performs all operations on the Microsoft FOC cluster on behalf of the user account used by the System Automation Application Manager FOC adapter service to log on.

  • Microsoft FOC clusters are not request- but command-driven. Commands for bringing resources and groups online or offline are performed but not retained as persistent goals. No list of previously issued commands is available, and commands previously issued against a group or resource cannot be canceled. The latest command issued against a group or resource determines whether it should be online or offline. Commands issued by operators have the same priority as commands issued by the end-to-end automation manager.
  • Microsoft FOC resources and groups cannot be suspended from automation by an end-to-end automation operator.
  • Microsoft FOC groups have no "real" desired state. Microsoft FOC performs online and offline commands on Microsoft FOC groups by propagating them to member resources. Microsoft FOC groups only act as containers and reflect the state of the contained Microsoft FOC resources. If some of the Microsoft FOC resources in a group were brought online and others offline, the group is in a mixed state - it is not clear whether the desired state of the group is online or offline.
  • Microsoft FOC clusters do not have a policy concept as known by end-to-end automation. For this reason, the Policy Information page for Microsoft FOC domains does not show reasonable information.
  • Microsoft FOC does not monitor resources which are not expected to be online.

    Example:

    A file share resource has two different cluster nodes as possible owners. If the file share is currently defined and working (that is, online) on the first node, Microsoft FOC does not monitor the state of the file share on the second cluster node. Microsoft FOC will not notice a manual definition of the file share on the second node.

    The FOC adapter does not work around this monitoring approach and is thus not able to reliably report resources’ offline states.

  • Microsoft FOC groups reject offline commands in the following cases:
    • The group contains the quorum resource.
    • The group contains the FOC adapter service resource (if the adapter is made highly available).
  • Microsoft FOC resources reject offline commands in the following cases:
    • The resource is the quorum resource and the quorum resource directly or indirectly depends on the resource to be taken offline.
    • The resource is the FOC adapter service resource (if the adapter is made highly available).
    • If the FOC adapter service resource directly or indirectly depends on the resource to be taken offline (if the adapter is made highly available).
  • Microsoft FOC nodes reject exclude commands if the adapter is made highly available and the group that contains the FOC adapter service resource is located on the node. In this case, message EEZZ0012E appears indicating that the group in question cannot be taken offline without impacting the FOC adapter.