Business Objects XI 3.X’s Server Intelligence Agent (SIA)

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Business Objects XI 3.0 introduced us to an entirely new architectural concept called the Server Intelligence Agent (SIA). The SIA takes over Business Objects service/server management from the Central Configuration Manager of XI Release 2. When you start a SIA you can configure all, some, or none of the servers contained in/managed by the SIA to also be started. All BO servers in a SIA must belong to the same cluster. A BOXI SIA is much more than a server group, in fact, aside from also providing a grouping of BO servers in CMC it does not behave like a Server Group because you cannot schedule to it or any other such process assignment.

Sorting Through the Confusing Naming Conventions


Business Objects terminology can be a little confusing to those who equate “node” with “server”, “machine”, “host”, or “machine”. In the world of Business Objects XI 3.0 and 3.1 SIA and node have a 1-to-1 relationship. SIA and node even share the same name, so for all intents and purposes they are synonymous. Machine and host are also synonymous; however, in general “host” will be used in CMC. “Server” still refers to a single instance of the Business Objects service run on a host/machine which is a member of a SIA/node. Got it? Good.

Note of PronunciationBy the way, within SAP Business Objects it seems that most people say the word “see-ah” when they speak of Service Intelligence Agents or SIAs. Get used to it, people will pause to think when you say “S-I-A” spelled out (and we don’t want anyone pausing and thinking, do we?).

Managing Your SIA


The Server Intelligence Agent does not have its one graphical use interface (GUI), but parts of it can be managed through CCM, Central Management Console (CMC), and the utility called “ServerConfig” (Unix/Linux only, utility built in CCM for Windows). In the CMC, you should look under “Servers” and you will find the SIA called “Nodes” here.

Naming Your SIA


There is a character limit but I cannot tell you exactly what it is yet. The BO installer does have a 15 character limit, but this is a limit enforced by the installer only and you can always create longer named SIA later. You cannot use spaces, dashes, or periods in your SIAs name. You also cannot start the SIA with a number, but you can use numbers after the first character. I try to name my SIA by its main purpose and I include the short host name as well, such as “cms_myserver”. SIA names will default to the host name or even the host’s fully-qualified domain name.

Porting Your SIA


The default port for a SIA is 6410. In most cases you would want to use this one first. Then if you must add more SIA to the host/machine I suggest following some incremental like 6510, 6610, 6710 or perhaps 7410, 8410, 9410. It really will depend mostly on your hosts available ports. Sticking to tens will make it easier for you to remember in the future and easier for your successors to guess what is going on.

Can 2 SIA Run on the Same Host???


Yes, in fact, you can run many different SIA on the same host and each SIA can either point to the same cluster or possibly to an entirely different cluster. Think about this. It means that if you only had enough machines to stand up one environment, you could put 3 SIA on each machine and point each SIA to a different CMS database and Viola! you have 3 distinct BO XI 3.x environments running on the same hardware. How cool is that? Not so cool if your host doesn’t have enough RAM and CPU, but very cool otherwise.

SIA Warnings


Here are some things to look out for working with Server Intelligence Agents:

  • You cannot rename a SIA, but you can create a new one with the name you want, and delete the old one with the name you no longer want.
  • When you are installing the BO software for the first time be sure to give a name to the SIA that you want to stick with. If you later delete this SIA and have no SIA with this name present it will cause you trouble when patching the Business Objects Enterprise software. You can later workaround this trouble by updating your “ccm.config” file, but better to prevent than to cure.
  • It is always best to shutdown all BO servers/services/executables running on the machine on which you intend to setup a new SIA.
  • If you do not have a valid license key loaded (see CMC) then you cannot create more than one SIA in the cluster.
  • A SIA can be effectively reinitialized or even redirected to a new cluster if you create a new SIA on the same host with the same SIA name.
  • In order to completely delete a SIA from a cluster and from the host you must: (1) stop the SIA and all of its servers on the host, (2) have a SIA with the same name present on both host and CMS
  • The easiest way to clean-up orphaned/phantom SIA in the cluster (which have no host) is to add a new SIA to the cluster/CMS and select “noservers” as the kind of SIA you want to create
  • Although CMC permits you to manage the servers in your SIA without the SIA running, it is recommended that you do not attempt to add any servers to your SIA unless it is started. Cloning servers to a down SIA can really create a mess.
  • If you are creating a SIA that will have a CMS then you will need to enter in the database credentials for the CMS InfoStore database.
  • If you are create a SIA that does not include a CMS then you will need to have a CMS running in the cluster where you intend to create the SIA and you will need to be able to provide a BO Administrator user’s login information.
  • You cannot delete a SIA that is running. Shut it down completely, make sure all of its servers are stopped, and then try to delete it.
  • I do not recommend removing all SIA from a Business Objects host machine. If you want to delete all
  • If you use CCM or cmsdbsetup.sh (Linux/UNIX) to copy a CMS to a new database then it will copy all SIA. You will want to be very careful here and leave the source system down until you have deleted all of those copied SIA. How do you delete the SIA??? See above. šŸ˜‰ Hint: if you need to delete a SIA from a CMS, you can create a noservers SIA of exactly the same on any host machine and that host machine will take over that SIA.

BOXI SIA, the One and Only


Most SAP Business Objects documentation states clearly that the acronym SIA stands for Server Intelligence Agent, but I have seen it also referred to as a “Software Intelligence Agent” in at least one BO document. For example, the Service Pack 3 release notes say, “After installing Service Pack 3 on a system where the Software Intelligence Agent (SIA) node has been removed…” I only mention this in hopes of clarifying any confusion. We can take away at least 3 points from this: (1) There is no such thing as a Software Intelligence Agent. (2) SAP Business Objects documentation is fallible (also it does omit a lot of things too, such as registry information and “Repo Scan”, but I digress). (3) It is not a good idea to delete all SIA from a host machine.

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66 thoughts on “Business Objects XI 3.X’s Server Intelligence Agent (SIA)”

  1. I have a SIA that is not communicating with the CMS and is listening on port 4043 instead of 6410. Servers managed by this SIA show the error “The server is not managed by server intelligence agent…”.

    What could be causing this error?

    It is in a 2 node cluster xir3.1 fp3.1 on websphere 7.0 windows 2003.

  2. Hi Dave, if it were me I would just recreate the SIA with the exact same name. I suspect that when the SIA was created other BO executables werer running on the server and they caused it to get screwed up. I don’t really waste time debugging my faulty SIA, I just re-initialize them again.

  3. I created a new SIA with all the default servers. But now when I try to create a new server or clone a server to that node the node is not in the list. I can’t clone or add a server to the node.

  4. Hi Dave, whenever I have seen that I have found that the SIA is messed up. On my systems I would shutdown everything BO and then I would check to make sure no BO executables were running at all. Then I would create the SIA again with default servers. If that doesn’t work… well, I guess I would use a working SIA to delete the bad SIA then I would try to recreate the bad SIA again. those things can be a pain.

  5. Hi Julian,

    We are putting a DR solution in place for our systems. Once the DR Database is up running it has only Prod CMS as its a replicate database of Production. Can i create a new DR node with new CMS.

    Thanks
    Narsi

  6. Hi Narsi, please be careful with acronyms; they mean different things to different people. I understand that you mean “Disaster Recovery”. If so, I would say that depending on your RDBMS you should be able to add another schema and in there you could put another CMS. You would only need to create a new Server Intelligence Agent (SIA) and point it to the new schema.

  7. Hi there,

    I have a question. We have a certain user who cant connect to Webi although her pc is able to ping the servers. When she logs to Webi, this error appears,

    “There is no central management running.”

    I checked her user login parameters and we’re the same. I have no problem logging to Webi while she can’t.

    ANy help will be appreciated. Thanks!

  8. Hi Marie, are you certain that you can connect to the CMS through her PC. I suspect you cannot. Can you use her login information and login as her from your PC? The answer to these questions will help you pinpoint the problem.

    I would check the “hosts” file on her PC, perhaps the server she is putting in is being resolved differently due to the “hosts” file. Another thought is that you may be using server groups in such a way that her user is assigned to a CMS that is not up and running. This is not a common configuration, but just an idea.

  9. Thanks Julian for the reply. What I meant was:

    using her pc – same login details as mine, she cant connect to Webi

    using my pc – same login, i am able to connnect to Webi

    Her pc was actually used in the user training and has been functional since. There has been no changes in the network so I was wondering why specifically her pc can’t connect.

  10. Hi Marie, do take a look at her computer’s “hosts” file. Also, try a different browser from her computer as well. Some configuration on her computer (probably not a BO one) is the obstacle.

  11. Hello, I have a question relating to the SIA as it’s new to me (Upgrading from XI R2). When I attempt to “manage servers” from the CCM on a SIA that does not contain a CMS, I receive an error regarding the unability to login to that particular SIA. However, I can see and manage those servers from within the CMC just fine. I guess I’m just trying to confirm my suspicions that you can only utilize the “manage servers” on a SIA that contains a CMS. Any advice would be much appreciated

  12. Hi Jeremy, I believe that you are correct. Unfortunately, most of BO documentation assumes that you setup a CMS on every machine, even though this is not the best configuration. It is possible to do some management tasks when you give the CMS information of an actual CMS however. In fact, I think in Linux/Unix you can use the ccm.sh command and pass in a CMS running on another server. Nevertheless, it is unclear to me right now what I can and cannot do without a CMS configured on the machine.

  13. Hello. We recently moved a BOXI 3.1 SP3 installation from W2K3R2(x86)/mySQL to W2K8R2(x64)/MSSQL2008R2(x64). The problem that we facing is that SIA.EXE crashes continuously thus making the product unusable.
    Event ID 1000 is logged in Windows Application Log.
    Faulting application name: sia.exe, version: 2.0.1.0, time stamp: 0x45000000
    Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 6.1.7601.17514, time stamp: 0x46000000
    Exception code: 0xc0000005
    Fault offset: 0x00033428
    Faulting process id: 0xfe0
    Faulting application start time:
    Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Business Objects\BusinessObjects Enterprise 12.0\win32_x86\sia.exe
    Faulting module path: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ntdll.dll
    Report Id: 656346bb-8c08-11e0-9dcd-0050568c0004

    Any troubleshooting hints would be mostly appreciated.
    Kind regards.

  14. Hi NetRanger just checking, but you installed on Win2008 R2 Server using the SP3 full (standalone) install. As you probably know no installer below SP3 is supported. Also are you sure you are using Oracle 11.2 32-bit client (if using Oracle)?

  15. Hi Julian,

    First of all, i love your website. I often get helpful tips here! Thanks for that!

    My question is….We are planning to upgrade from R2 to XI 3.1 SP3. Due to budget constraints we are getting 3 servers- 1 each for dev/qa/prd.

    We have seen the Max connections reached error in R2 and wanted to check with you on couple of things:

    1. Can we create 2 SIAs on the same server for each of our environments? We have sufficient RAM and CPU on each server so wondering if having 2 CMS (managed by each of the SIA) would minimize the 2 GB memory limit.

    2. Since we have multiple Webi servers in R2, is it advisable to create the 2nd SIA will all the servers.

    We want to leverage the standalone servers for optimum performance.

    Please advise.

  16. Hi Julian. Thanks for your reply.
    Yes, we installed BO 3.1 with SP3 using the full installer (51038908_part1.exe, 51038908_part2.rar & 51038908_part3.rar).
    MS SQL 2008 R2 (x64) is installed on the same box for the BO databases.
    Yes, we are using the 32-bit Oracle Instant Client v11.2.0.1.0 (http://download.oracle.com/otn/nt/instantclient/112010/instantclient-basic-win32-11.2.0.1.0.zip and http://download.oracle.com/otn/nt/instantclient/112010/instantclient-sqlplus-win32-11.2.0.1.0.zip)
    Also, we used the 32-bit ODBC (C:\Windows\SysWOW64\odbcad32.exe) to set-up the system DSN’s for SQL.

    Best regards.

  17. Hi NetRanger, the only thing I see is that Oracle 11.2 is not supported. A product manager confirmed this for me recently.

  18. Hi Swaraj, I have asked many senior engineers at Business Objects about the impact and benefits of using multiple SIA on a machine. They all seem to be surprised at the idea and say that it is non-standard. Therefore, I don’t really have much information for you on the benefits. I like separating CMS and WebI processing servers into different SIA. This way if needed (server corruption) I can restart a WebI SIA without impacting the CMS. I wonder if it might be better for you to run two CMS in the same SIA (I have done this many times, put FRS in their too) and then run all of your WebI and Adaptive Job Servers in the other CMS. You could group the remaining servers in the SIA that makes the most sense to you. BTW, I personally prefer more Web Intelligence servers with lower connection limtis than less WebI servers with very high connection limits.

  19. Hello NetRanger, we are facing the same issue SIA is crashing and we are getting the same error which you got, were you able to resolve the issue?? if so can you please post it here.
    Thanks
    Phani

  20. Hi, Phani. Actually, we never managed to identify the cause of the problem because it happened at a random basis. We made sure to exlude this DLL from our virus scanning program and applied service pack 4 for BusinessObjects XI 3.1. I can say that the situation is pretty stable since two months (no more crashes), but we are looking forward to migrate to BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform 4.0.

  21. Hi, Julian.

    We’re upgrading from XI R2 to XI R3 SP4 and due to having different user accounts for different servers, we have a need for multiple nodes on the same machine (non-clustered environment). I’ve gone through the steps to create a new node and it appears to work however it doesn’t show up. I ran a command to find out what ports are assigned on the machine and the port number I used doesn’t show up. This leads me to believe that the wizard didn’t actually work.

    I followed the steps in the documentation and have no idea what I may have done incorrectly.

    Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

    Thanks!

  22. Hi Trudy, great question! I actually learned the hard way that most of the time when you create a new SIA (a.k.a. node) you must make sure that NO Business Objects server executables can be running at the time you create the new SIA. The exception to this might be if you create an empty SIA.

    From what you say, I assume that you are creating a SIA with a CMS. From my experience you cannot do this successfully if a CMS is running at the time of SIA creation. You won’t get any errors, but you may notice that the SIA is “created” more quickly than normal. In such case you will want to recreate the same SIA with the same name with no BO server executables running (stop all servers and kill any remaining BO processes) at the time of creation. Wow, did I just repeat myself like 3 times???

    Please let us know how if this helps. Good luck!

  23. Hi, Julian.

    I’m trying to create it with no servers assigned so I can then go in and change what I need over to it. I’ll stop all existing servers and give this another try.

    Thanks!!!

  25. Hi, Julian…

    If I want to move some servers to this new node, is there no way to do that other than cloning them then deleting them from the node they were originally assigned?

    Thanks again!

  26. You are welcome Trudy, glad it helped.

    Yes, you would have to clone the servers and then delete the originals. There is no other way that I know of and this should be reliable.

  27. Hi Julian

    Not sure if this is right forum for this issue.
    We are trying migration BO 6.5 to BO XIR3 using import wizard. In some of the migrated webi 6.x reports(.wid extn) few column headers and the data gets wrapped in addition to the format in 6.5. Since these are not .wqy files, we want to know if there is a single point of correction similar to the wqyConversionSettings.xml available for wqy files.
    Thanks in advance.

  28. Hi Kumar, this article is VERY loosely related to your question. I will leave it here, but chances are that others reading this article’s comments do not have experience with such upgrades. I have never upgraded from from 6.5 to XI 3.1 (please be aware there is no “R” in version 3.x). I suggest you look at the BOB forum (go to the “Links” page of this website and locate the link to BOB) and post your question in an appropriate place there.

    Most of the questions and discussions here is centered on the articles’ topics and we don’t have an article for such migrations yet.

  29. Julian, Thanks for the guidance and sorry for the intrusion. I have posted my query it in the respective BOB.

  30. Julian,
    Though I was successful earlier, Iā€™m having issues again creating new SIAā€™s (this time on our new production system). I had documented my steps earlier but must have missed something. I went through the steps I had, re-read over this article but am still having an issue trying to define a new SIA. I need to create two new SIAā€™s that will not have CMSā€™ defined to them. I have all BO services shutdown, with the exception of the CMS, can find no additional executables, verified my license key is correct, than followed the steps defined in the SAP BO Enterprise Administratorā€™s Guide. Those steps are to click on Add a SIA, enter the name and port number, then the username/password of the Windows AD account to be defined to it (this is a local admin account). I get to the end where it actually pops up a box ā€œAdding Server Intelligence Agentā€ that stays there about 5 seconds then disappears. I must be missing something but canā€™t determine what.
    Iā€™m not sure if you can tell what step Iā€™m missing but Iā€™m certainly hoping you can!
    Oh yeah, love the website!
    Thank you!
    Trudy

  31. Hi Trudy,

    Struggled with similar issue (although I successfully went through through the procedure at least 50 times or so).

    Try tracing the CCM:
    “…\BusinessObjects Enterprise 12.0\win32_x86\ccm.exe” -trace

    Logfiles under the logging folder.

    Hope it helps!
    Raf

  33. Hi Julian, I am new to this forum…..I’am having one issue with the SIA it is throwing the error in eventviewer like EVENT ID 4096 any help in the above issue. For your reference recently we’have changed our hostname.

  34. Hi Imran, If you made a hostname change then I suggest you create a new SIA on that machine. Create it first, you can even make one with no servers. Then clone every server in the old one to the new one, then delete the old one. I think this might solve your issue.

  35. Hi Julian,

    Thanks for your quick reply on ths same and i really like your forum .
    but julian it is a production environment and all our reporting environments are working with out any errors
    with that error can you plase let me if i can continue with out changing the SIA.
    1) any ipmact on servers?
    2) is SIA is really working in BO environment?

  36. Hi Imran,
    It is up to you to decide if you want to see if creating a new SIA will resolve the Event Viewer errors. I have ignored such errors in the past when the system seemed to be unimpacted. However, make sure there is not impact.

  38. Hi Sridhar, go to Query Builder and run this query to get the License Keys from any system:

    SELECT si_name, si_kind
    FROM CI_SystemObjects
    WHERE si_kind = 'LicenseKey'

  39. Hi,

    I’m new in BO, i tried to open the CMC but it didnt open. I checked event viewer on windows and i got the error below.

    CMS is unstable and will shut down immediately. Reason: BusinessObjects Enterprise CMS: Unable to connect to the CMS system database “BOE120:localhost:3306”. Reason: Can’t connect to MySQL server on ‘localhost’ (10061)

  40. Hi John, it sounds to me as though your database is down or is not accessible at the moment. I have not used the MySQL database included with the installer, but there must be a simple way to restart it. Can someone please help John out?

  41. Afternoon,
    I recenctly downloaded a trial version of Crystal Server 2011 and cannot log into the CMC. It throws the error “Server XXXX:6400 not found or server may be down (FWM 01003) null”. I keep seeing posts about this SIA.exe running n taskmgr, but I do not seem to have this running in taskmgr, nor is it an entry in the CCM. Am I missing anything. I went throught the install utility…was quite vanila.
    Thank You
    Aaron

  42. Hi Aaron, I actually saw similar behavior when I installed Business Objects BI 4.0 platform for Windows and chose to use the included free SQL Server Express database. I never found a solution beyond just creating a new SIA to a different database. I suggest you try the same. I think you might be looking at an installer error in creating the SIA. Use CCM to create a new SIA (if you can find a database). Also you may be able to get SAP Business Objects support to help you.

  43. Hi Julian,

    I had following queries in regards to CMS and RAS server :-

    1. determine and provide references to documented maximums for: #max connections per CMS (believed to be 500-600) and #max CMS per server (believed to be 1).
    Arithmetic will then provide the number of servers required (as a minimum for the CMS provision) at our end.

    2. For RAS, is the connection from CMS kept open until 1) Until the report is generated? 2) Until the report is read and the WebSphere/CMS connection shuts down

    3. For CMS, is the WebSphere connection kept until the reader closes the report, or until CMS delivers it? (I suspect the former).

    4. For Oracle, is the DB Connection kept open by the RAS 1) Until the queries are done? 2) Until the report is generated? 3) Until the CMS connection to the RAS shuts down?

    5. What happens if we increase RAS open connections above 75 as currently set to 90 or 100 ?

    What about the CORBA settings that we need to take into consideration?

    Our current configuration of servers is :-

    6 x SUN UltraSPARC VII+ CPU cores
    8GB RAM
    72 GB local disk space
    NAS DISK connected
    5GB EACH for IFR and OFR.

    SO we have 3 RAS per server and each server has 6 cores that is SHARED amongst CMS / OS / BOE / RAS..

    your thoughts on each points will be awesomely appreciated.

    Regards
    Abhi

  44. Hi Dave,

    Is there any documentation from SAP which says that multiple SIA’s can be created on the same machine pointing to the same repository? If so, can you provide me the note number?

    Thanks in advance.

    Regards,

  45. I am not aware of any documentation saying it cannot be done or that it can be done. I can however tell you that I have done it. I have also seen it done in production environments. It is stable and it can be a good idea if you want to segregate certain Business Objects servers/services from each other (such as CMS), so that you can restart a SIA without impacting the servers int he other SIA. In fact, I am pretty sure you could even have multiple SIA connecting to different databases too, allowing multiple environments to be served up by one single server.

    The only concerns that I am aware of are (1) CPU and RAM limitations, have enough; (2) use different port numbers for each SIA and each CMS; (3) when creating the second, third, etc. SIA try to make sure that no other SIA is running on the server during the creation if you are creating a SIA with a CMS or default servers.

  46. Thanks Julian. The reason I asked for the documentation is because the Bo vendors here are telling me that it is not possible to have 2 SIA’s pointing to the same repository on the same machine and if we do, the setup is wrong. We have 2 SIA’s in the production environment pointing to the same repository on the same machine but one of them is stopped. We have not deleted the stopped SIA as yet. But I need to prove that the setup is correct and that SAP has documents which say so.

  47. Hi George, I hear that. SAP support folks have questioned me before about running 2 on the same box. I always ask them to show me proof that it is a problem. I don’t know of any BO documentation supporting or refuting the configuration, sorry.

  48. Hi, I installed SP3 recently by mapping a drive on another BOXI machine and executed the update from that machine. I’m pretty sure what has done is to add a remote CMS Server entry under my startup tab of my SIA. If I restart my machine it will not start CMS on local node. I have to delete the remote CMS entry and start SIA again. CMS will start on local node. Is there a way to permanently delete the remote CMS entry? I’ve tried to delete and it gets added back. Viewed cluster registry settings. There has to be a way to uncluster or delete this entry for good. Ideas? Thanks.

  49. I want to create my Disaster Recovery on my UAT box. Do i need to point the FRS in a different directory. My application is running on Windows servers and i am BOXI3.1. I need a detail document on how to set up disaster recovery on an existing UAT box.

    Thanks

  50. Hi Ram,
    Question. Do you want to replace your UAT with the DR or you want an additional DR with the UAT?

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