Sun Java System Application Server 9.1 Deployment Planning Guide

Management Agent

The management agent is a server process (named ma) that can access resources on a host; for example, it can create devices and start database processes. The management agent coordinates and performs management client commands such as starting or stopping a database instance.

A management client connects to a management agent by specifying the address and port number of the agent. Once connected, the management client sends commands to HADB through the management agent. The agent receives requests and executes them. Thus, a management agent must be running on a host before issuing any hadbm management commands to that host. The management agent can be configured as a system service that starts up automatically.

Ensuring availability of management agents

The management agent process ensures the availability of the HADB node supervisor processes by restarting them if they fail. Thus, for deployment, you must ensure the availability of the ma process to maintain the overall availability of HADB. After restarting, the management agent recovers the domain and database configuration data from other agents in the domain.the system.

Use the host operating system (OS) to ensure the availability of the management agent. On Solaris or Linux, init.d ensures the availability of the ma process after a process failure and reboot of the operating system. On Windows, the management agent runs as a Windows service. Thus, the OS restarts the management agent if the agent fails or the OS reboots.