Automate Server Mastery Keeping Your Automate Server at Its Best - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Automate Server Mastery

Keeping Your Automate Server at Its Best Presented by Brandon Lippie & William Smalley

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Who Are We?

I’ve worked with Automate going on 7 years with 5 years working for ConnectWise in Automate Support (3 years) and Consulting (2 years). While with Automate Support I was on the Server Down team, working heavily with the Automate Server. After leaving ConnectWise I spent 6 months working for a MSP as a SysAdmin helping with Automate, and now I find myself working with Stack Advisors as a RMM Consultant for the past 9 months.

Brandon Lippie

Project Consultant Stack Advisors

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Who Are We?

William is Project Consultant at Stack Advisors. His roles are new client implementations and current client stabilizations and customization

• assistance. He started his IT career in 2000 in

the networking and systems side of Ybor nightclubs and bars, moved into the booming real estate IT sector before the crash, then the Telecom sector through the early 2000's and worked for Labtech and a myriad of Tampa based Law firms, MSP and telecom companies

• ver two decades.

William Smalley

Project Consultant Stack Advisors

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What is Stack Advisors?

Stack Advisors was founded in 2011 by longtime ConnectWise power users when they realized they had overcome many of the obstacles that left other MSPs struggling. Driven by the desire to help others, Stack Advisors continued to evolved into a premier resource for the ConnectWise Suite of products. Today our experts fill the gaps for ITSPs when they don't have the bandwidth or expertise to get the most

• ut of their investment by providing Consulting, Management Services and our

automated machine deployment tool: MSP Toolshed

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Agenda

Provide attendees with the guidance required to keep your on- premise Automate system running at an optimal level Provide you with the steps necessary to troubleshoot issues that may arise Detail the information you should gather before requesting help from ConnectWise support Please submit questions via the Q/A button We will provide a link for all SQL

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Setting a Baseline

Start with ConnectWise’s recommendations for server configuration, tweak as necessary

• https://tinyurl.com/y7jhphcv

Ensure that enough RAM is allocated to host most of the DB in memory – memory is a lot faster than disk!

• < 16GB = 50% of RAM, >16GB = 70-75% RAM

Follow good practice in allocating disks – if on platters, make sure you’re not sharing space with other Databases. SSDs are wonderful! Avoid priority windows for external maintenance like AV and Backup

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Avoiding Conflict

CW Automate has some key windows to be aware of

• 12-1 AM
• Plugin Calls
• Health & Compliance Calculations
• AutoNight
• 3-5 AM
• DB Backup and Zip
• Daily Maintenance (Retention management)
• 1-2 PM
• Plugin Calls
• AutoDay

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Avoiding Conflict - AV

Avoid Active Scans during the CW Automate Maintenance Windows Disable aggressive functions that can slow down Database Activity Create Exceptions

• CW Automate processes and Program Files
• MySQL process and Program Files
• MySQL DB file space
• MySQL Temp and log file spaces

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Avoiding Conflict - Backup

Don’t run backups during the maintenance windows Avoid VSS if possible. If not, stick to key directories:

• \Program Files\LabTech\Backup\*.zip
• \LTShare\

VM Level backups typically run the best.

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• MaxRunningScripts
• ScriptPerBatch

Dashboard Configs

• Worker Processes
• Recycler Timing

IIS Configs

• Max Connections
• Buffer Pool
• Enable Slow Log and Long Query Time

My.ini Configs

Advanced Configuration

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Finding Backlog

• Max Connection Utilization

Query links on last page

• Database Backlog

Query links on last page

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Your Database Grows with Your Organization

A number of factors will cause your database to grow:

• Time (historical data retention)
• Agent count growth
• Technician utilization of Automate
• Custom Automation
• New features
• Integration additions

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Monitoring Growth

• Keep an eye on table sizes

Query links on last page

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Watching the Common Culprits

Large tables cause issues at startup and in monitoring

• EventLogs Table
• WindowsUpdateETLFiles Table
• (Product) Integration tables
• History tables
• Ticketdata Table

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Retention Times

Try to find a balance between necessity, usefulness, and performance

1

What are your contractual

• bligation to your

clients?

• Are your current

settings optimal?

2

What would be a realistic timeframe a technician would reference?

3

What age conditions are your monitors filtering

• n?

4

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Trimming the Fat

When cleaning up a whole table, use Truncate

Query links on last page

Alternatively, when a table is too large, you can drop the table and recreate from the SQL queries provided in the setup folder.

• Don’t forget Procs, Triggers, and Views.
• Doesn’t hurt to use CheckTables.exe after also.

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Trimming the Fat

If getting rid of a majority of entries in a large table

• 1. Create another table with the same structure

Query links on last page

• 2. Insert all results you’d like to keep into this new table

Query links on last page

• 3. Drop the old table

Query links on last page

• 4. Rename the new table to the expected name

Query links on last page

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Using Automate as its own Watchdog

Consider using Automate, or a backup product, to watch for server issues like:

• Disabled Internal Monitors (Next Scan is a year from now)

Query links on last page

• Scripts queued up

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• Heartbeat and LastContact discrepancies

Query links on last page

• Database Agent resource usage

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Automating Maintenance

If you have maintenance actions, you can split them up into two parts:

• OS activities that need to be performed on the server
• SQL activities that can be driven through any engine

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Automating Maintenance OS Scripting

Leverage CW Automate wherever you can to manage itself. Use CW Automate scripts to handle things that don’t require stopping the Database Agent Use Scheduled Tasks to call batch/PowerShell scripts to handle anything that would require stopping the Database Agent

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Automating Maintenance SQL Management

If you’re comfortable managing MySQL, then you can create Stored Procedures to run SQL and use a routine to call the procedure If you’ve got a cleanup script in the form of a .SQL file that you run periodically, you can call it using an Automate Script Consider converting it to an array of script steps in an Automate Client Script and schedule that to occur in the dashboard with whatever frequency necessary

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Something’s Broke

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Now What?

Isolate

• Isolate the issue
• What components of CW Automate

are affected?

• What rogue behavior is being

exhibited?

1

Review

• Review the associated log files
• Does CW Automate recognize

there’s something wrong?

2

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Where Can I Find These Logs? What Are They For?

MySQL Log (DB Dir) – @ServerName@.err MySQL Slow Log (DB Dir) - @ServerName@-Slow.err General DB Agent Log (Program Files) – LTAErrors ASP Log (Temp) – LTAsp API Logs (Temp\_Automate Logs) DB Agent Loop Activity - LTAProcess Script Engine – LTAScriptEngine Solution Center – LTSCServiceLog Licensing – LTLicense Alerting (Monitor Failure tracking) – LTAAlerts, LTADBAgent

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Now What?

Isolate

• Isolate the issue
• What components of CW

Automate are affected?

• What rogue behavior is

being exhibited?

1

Review

• Review the associated log

files

• Does CW Automate

recognize there’s something wrong?

2

Research

• Review Known Issues on

CW University

3

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Known Issue (KI)? Who Knew?

Usually you’re not the first person to experience something…

• Check the University to see if CW has seen this before
• http://www.connectwise.com/knownissues

If you’re not on the current version of CW Automate or the Solution having issues, check the Resolved Known Issues

• If you see the issue in a ‘Released’ status:
• 1. Update the core (or solution)
• 2. Restart
• 3. Retest

If you see a matching open KI, check for the replication steps – if it’s similar to what you’re seeing, then prepare to let the front line know.

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Now What?

Isolate

• Isolate the issue
• What components of CW

Automate are affected?

• What rogue behavior is

being exhibited?

1

Review

• Review the associated log

files

• Does CW Automate

recognize there’s something wrong?

2

Research

• Review Known Issues on

CW University

3

Attempt

• Attempt to troubleshoot it

yourself

• Start with Service

Restarts!

4

Reach out

• Reach out to ConnectWise

Support for help

5

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Getting Help

Screenshot behavior and upload to Imgur/Gyzao/etc Copy relevant log entries into a Pastebin Join the Chat Queue – but not until you’ve got your documentation ready Provide them with everything that you’ve collected – if it’s already a KI, save both of you the extra search time and let them know. Be Patient - Chat techs may take on multiple roles and multiple issues at once. By now you should’ve provided enough information to give them a good head start on their troubleshooting and they can either fill in the gaps, or dispatch this out for the next tier. Most often you may reach a Tier 1 Support Tech, all the information in chat is saved and will be sent to Tier 2 Support Tech. Remember, CW Support will only Support current release version of Automate when it comes to bug fix.

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SQL Queries: https://stackadvisors.com/explore2020

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