Service Restarts

Question

Hi,

I'm trying to configure service restarts. I've tried both apmservicecontrol and psservice. Neither one seems to do anything at all. apmservicecontrol doesn't even work from the command line. Psservice works from the command line, but not from within the alert. Any advice would be helpful. Thanks!

aLTeReGo · Answer

I'd recommend playing around with the APMServiceControl.exe via the command line, or looking at the event log of the Orion server and the remote server to check for errors or security related issues. In most cases the problem is related to permissions. If you still can't get it working I recommend opening a case with support.

Marchaq · Answer

Thanks for your response. The APMServiceControl doesn't work for me at all. I run a test for the alert and I see the variable expand to the correct Component ID and yet the service is not started on the remote host...

I'll check on the service account, but it looks like I'll have to configure a separate alert for each service, since I'm probably going to have to hard code service name in the alert action...

aLTeReGo · Answer

The APMServiceControl.exe should be working provided the "Property to monitor" defined in the alert Trigger Condition is defined as "APM: Component Monitor" in the Advanced Alert Manager. The APMServiceControl.exe is dependent upon the ${ComponentId} being passed as a variable so APM knows precisely which service on what host should be restarted. It also uses the same credentials to connect to the host and restart the service that are being using to monitor the service in APM. The APM Administrators Guide outlines how the APMServiceControl.exe is used. Below, I've also included an example of the APMServiceControl.exe usage.

Usage:

APMServiceControl ComponentId [-h] [-c=COMMAND-NAME] [-t=TIMEOUT]

Options:

ComponentId: The ID of the Windows Service Component Monitor to control.  In the Advanced Alert Engine, you can use the alert variable ${{ComponentId}} to determine this value.

-c = COMMAND NAME: The command to sent to the service. This must be START, STOP, or RESTART.  The default is {0}.
-t = TIMEOUT: Timeout for the command in seconds.  Default is {1} second.
-h = This is help text.

Example:

From an APM Component Alert Trigger: 
APMServiceControl ${{ComponentId}} -c=RESTART

which would look like this:
APMServiceControl.exe 156849 -c=RESTART

The likely reason why you're having issues using the 3rd party psservice.exe executable is related to permissions. Processes run as a result of an alert are run under the context of the user account of the Advanced Alert Engine service. The default context is the local system account which has fairly limited permissions, which is likely the reason why psservice.exe runs fine when you're logged in to the console, but doesn't run when triggered from the Alert Engine. To change the user context of the SolarWinds Alerting Engine service you'll need to open the service properties, go to the "Log On" tab, and have the service run under a specified administrator account as pictured below. Once you've made this change you'll need to restart the service for the changes to take effect. Once you've completed this any 3rd party executable or script run as a result of a trigger action of the Advanced Alert Manager will run with the permissions of the user account you designated to run the SolarWinds Alerting Engine service.