AVAMAR : Restarting MCS

What is Avamar MCS

The Management Console Server (MCS) provides centralized administration (scheduling, monitoring, and management) for the Avamar server. The MCS also runs the server-side processes used by the Avamar Administrator graphical management console which is serviced by JAVA.  When you start the Avamar GUI you are interacting with the MCS

 
PG28- EMC AVAMAR 6.1 ADMIN GUIDE

The MCS interacts with the client avagent to start backup and recovery. Avamar agents are platform-specific software processes that run on the client and communicate with the Management Console Server (MCS) and any plug-ins installed on
that client. The MCS contacts the client’s avagent process and starts an avtar to perform a backup or recovery. 

I have made some changes on configurations on mcserver.xml files /usr/local/avamar/var/mc/server_data/prefs/mcserver.xml and after the changes i'll need to restart MCS to make sure it takes affect.

As usual, you will need to login as ADMIN, or in my case i login as root and then change to Admin ID

admin@utility-01:~/>:su - admin
admin@utility-01:~/>:ssh-agent bash
admin@utility-01:~/>: ssh-add ~admin/.ssh/admin_key

STOP MCS (Its always suggested that you run dpnctl status first before stopping the MCS to check any services is down)

admin@utility-01:~/>: dpnctl stop mcs
dpnctl: INFO: Shutting down MCS...
dpnctl: INFO: MCS shut down.

After MCS Stopped, check the status

admin@utility-01:~/>: dpnctl status
dpnctl: INFO: gsan status: up
dpnctl: INFO: MCS status: down.
dpnctl: INFO: EMS status: up.
dpnctl: INFO: Backup scheduler status: down.
dpnctl: INFO: dtlt status: up.
dpnctl: INFO: Maintenance windows scheduler status: enabled.
dpnctl: INFO: [see log file "/usr/local/avamar/var/log/dpnctl.log"]

Start back MCS

admin@utility-01:~/>: dpnctl start mcs
dpnctl: INFO: Starting MCS...
dpnctl: INFO: To monitor progress, run in another window: tail -f /tmp/dpnctl-mcs-start-output-4109
dpnctl: INFO: MCS started.

Checked again the status

admin@utility-01:~/>: dpnctl status
dpnctl: INFO: gsan status: up
dpnctl: INFO: MCS status: up.
dpnctl: INFO: EMS status: up.
dpnctl: INFO: Backup scheduler status: down.
dpnctl: INFO: dtlt status: up.
dpnctl: INFO: Maintenance windows scheduler status: enabled.

During the start back MCS , there's a line shows to tail one file to monitor the progress. Here is the files, it will show you verbose

root@utility-01:~/#: tail -f /tmp/dpnctl-mcs-start-output-4109
check.mcs                        passed
=== PASS === check.mcs PASSED OVERALL (prestart)
Starting Administrator Server at: Thu Oct 11 14:51:00 SGT 2012
Starting Administrator Server...
2012-10-11 14:51:22.988:INFO::Logging to STDERR via org.mortbay.log.StdErrLog
2012-10-11 14:51:23.065:INFO::jetty-6.1.23
2012-10-11 14:51:23.100:INFO::Extract lib/axis2.war to /usr/local/avamar/var/mc/server_tmp/Jetty_0_0_0_0_9443_axis2.war____.w8a9ms/webapp
2012-10-11 14:51:26.267:INFO::Started SslSocketConnector@0.0.0.0:9443
Administrator Server started.
INFO: Starting Data Domain SNMP Manager....
INFO: Connecting to MCS Server: utility-01.corpnet2.com at port: 7778...
INFO: Successfully connected to MCS Server: utility-01.corpnet2.com at port: 7778.
INFO: No trap listeners were started, Data Domain SNMP Manager didn't start.

Sometime, in older version of Avamar when you stopped MCS it will stop the maintanencice and schedule, to start it back run this command:

dpnctl start maint

dpnctsl start sched