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. 😉 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.
I want an additional DR with UAT.
Thanks
I want an additional DR with the UAT.
Thanks
Ram
If that is the case, then the only way I can think of is do an automated import and export of a biar into the destination repository from the source repository.Just create another SIA on the UAT machine pointing to the DR DB.
I intend to bring down Prod SIA and copy the file store from the prod and create a new SIA pointing to the DR datbase and point the Input and output filestore to the filestore copied from prod.
I need a document with best practice for DR to follow before I do this task.
Thanks.
Hi,
When installing BO, like mentioned in the topic “Naming Your SIA” above, the installer does not let you have dashes or hyphens in it. The problem is the server’s hostname has dashes in it and BO automatically removes the dashes while installing.
The installation goes through and SIA is also installed HOWEVER it never starts up and when we try to start it manually, it just does not start.
We suspect it is because of the hostname. Can you please suggest what could be the problem or if there is a way we could rename the SIA without any issues since this is the only SIA we are using for our web app.
Thanks,
Adi
Hi Adi, the SIA can be any name, it does not have to reflect your server’s name. Perhaps you should try a reinstall and choose a SIA by completely deleting the SIA name and typing in something new. Also, you could try to just create a new SIA in CCM.
Hi,
Your post helped me understand the confusing BO terminology, thanks!
I have a question about adding a new node on the same machine. I would like to have two nodes, which I call independent. Essentially these must be two separate CMS’s, so one can be production and the other development.
All ok, I can create the new node with default server, but all f the servers are marked as Disabled and I cannot find a way to enable them. The servers are started, but when I try to import biar file with reports and universes, only the folders get imported.
What could be the problem with this new node?
Thanks,
Chris
Hello Chris, what you propose is what I call “stacking” SIA. This is indeed possible; however, both of them MUST have distinct port numbers. For example, one can have 6410 and the other could have 7410. Make sure of course taht both of these ports are not being used by other processes on the server. In the case that more than one of the Server Intelligence Agents contains a CMS then each CMS must have a different port number (for example, 6400 and 7400). Finally, you must remember that if these these are completely unrelated/unclustered SIA and CMS then each MUST have its own database/schema and each must have your license key entered.
The issue you mentioned of disabled servers that cannot be activated sounds exactly like a missing license key issue, but please do check all of the above and report back on the solution.
Hi,
Thanks for this post, it clears out some terms confusion.
In our organisation, we have 1 prod server (VM) + 1 dev server (VM) with different nodes and cms.
I am quite new in BO world, but I still get confused for the follwing cases :
1. What is the advantages when adding nodes ?
2. If we want to set up a test or uat server, what is the best approach : create a new server with a new fresh installaion or adding a new node ( in this case could you guide me on how to proceed ?)
Thanks in advance.
Julian,
An urgent query please. I have a peculiar problem related to SIA and have exhausted all options and hence requesting assistance to anyone I can find. Here is the problem description.
I was having problems with schedules not going through or going extremely slow. Since nothing else worked, I attempted a restart of the SIA on one of the servers in the cluster, where the problem seemed to be. Now, it just won’t start. After much analysis, I found that it is caused because two servers (Adaptive Processing Server and Web Application Container Server) are appearing enabled in the Servers List, while it is not available in the task manager or anywhere else.
I have tried stopping the services to no avail. I have also tried disabling the individual services and also the entire SIA. Even with the SIA disabled, these servers still showed as running.
I am using BOXI3.1 with CMS configured on oracle. The repository is on a SAN. The cluster has 2 servers which host the CMS, and a third one exclusively for reporting servers. The repository is configured only on the server which is down at present, so you can probably understand my desperation.
NOTE: Restarting the Windows Server 2008 on which it is hosted does not seem to be an option.
Try logging into the CMC and checking the servers under nodes. You might be able to stop it from there.
Hello,
From the above article and queries, I understood that
1. We can create multiple SIA’s in the same machine pointing to the same repository (with different port Number)
2. We can create multiple SIA’s in the same machine pointing to different repository (with different port Number)
What are the advantages of having multiple SIA’s ? Do we create multiple SIA’s when we have multiple user accounts or is there any other purpose too?
Suppose when we schedule a .WID report, Adaptive job server \ Web intelligence processing server will be taking care of the request but
how can we know that which Adaptive job server \ web intelligence processing server takes care of scheduling out of these SIA’s configured.
Any help in this regard would be highly appreciated.
Best Regards
Sandy
I have restart our SAPBO 4.1 sp7 server under windows
after restart SIA service it will automatically stop within 5 second not start in CCM it stopped ( Tomcate service and world wide web publishing service start)
When i check log i found
Exception in thread “main”
i am unable to understand what happend how to resolved this issue please guide me
I have restart our SAP BO 4.1 sp7 server under windows
after restart SIA service not start in CCM it stopped ( Tomcate service and world wide web publishing service start) when I goto to
When i read log i found
Exception in thread “main”
i am unable to understand what happend how to resolved this issue please guide me how to solve it
Hi,
I’m completely new to SAP BO.
Can somebody help me on below query:
We recently migrated our oracle database to different environment.
Due to this, database name has been changed, I need to point SAP BO XI 3.1 to new database. We have tried running CMSDBSETUP.sh, but did not work. Also trying to create a new SIA pointing to new database, but this is also not listing when I’m running serverconfig.sh script.
Could you help me on this.
Thanks and Regards,
Pushpa
In our 4.2 environment, we frequently need to restart the SIA. I am wondering what is causing it to stop and can not find and clues in the event viewer.
Is this normal behavior? The fix is simple, just start the service in the Services management console but I would like to prevent it from stopping altogether. This is only occurring in our Dev environment.
Any suggestions on how to solve this problem would be appreciated.
Regards,
Matt