Environment
GroupWise Disaster Recovery (Reload for GroupWise)
Situation
Understanding the GroupWise Disaster Recovery "QuickFinder Resolution Agent"
Resolution
GroupWise Disaster Recovery (GWDR) has a service called the “QuickFinder Resolution Agent†(QRA). The QRA really has nothing to do with backups, or even the data that is stored on the GWDR server. The QRA is a great service that takes advantage of the fact that the GWDR server regularly connects to the live post office. The QRA is built right into GWDR.
A User Calls and Says That The Find Feature Doesn't Work or is Extremely Slow
Every GroupWise Administrator has had this problem. This is a clear indication that the user's QuickFinder Indexes need to be rebuilt. Furthermore, the temporary QuickFinder Indexing that the POA does to fulfill the user's search request needlessly uses up CPU cycles.
What is The Purpose of The QuickFinder Resolution Agent?
When a GroupWise user’s database is rebuilt, the QuickFinder Index for that user’s mailbox is deleted. This is working as designed. By default, GroupWise generally rebuilds the entire QuickFinder Index over time for that particular mailbox. However larger mailboxes may never be fully re-indexed, because by default GroupWise does not do a full QuickFinder Index Rebuild on it’s own.
The effect on the end-user whose QuickFinder Index is not rebuilt is that the Find feature in GroupWise goes much slower, and in fact the Find feature may not find all of the items that it should.
This problem can only be resolved by requesting an “Unlimited Indexing Level†rebuild. However, the fact that a user database was rebuilt needs to be detected in order to be resolved. The QRA can detect, report and request a rebuild of a user's QuickFinder Index. The net effect is that a user does not have the days of strange problems related to the Find feature in GroupWise, and the GroupWise administrator does not need to come up with some kind of a detection and resolution procedure for this condition.
How Does the QuickFinder Resolution Agent Work?
Here is what the QRA does.
1. When the GWDR server connects to the live post office, to do a backup, the QRA detects if there are newly created *.dbx files in the ofuser directory. For example: user123.dba or user123.dbb etc.
2. If a *.dbx file was created sometime after the last backup, then the QRA acts.
3. The QRA detects the USERID of the user associated with user123.db. A message is also sent to the “Error Notification†recipients configured in GWDR System Administration.
4. Automatic Actions:
a.) If the QRA has been configured to automatically respond to the need for a QuickFinder Index Rebuild, the QRA will create an HTTP request to the production POA to rebuild the QuickFinder Index for user123.db.
b.) If the QRA has been configured to only detect and report the problem, an HTML message is sent to the “Error Notification†recipients, with a hypertext link that the recipient can click on to direct the QRA to request that the production POA rebuild the QuickFinder Index for user123.db.
The notion behind this choice of options is that some people do not want the QuickFinder Indexing process to just kick in at any time of the day. And so the GWDR administrator can choose which method they prefer.
How Can I Test The QuickFinder Resolution Agent?
1. Make a copy of a user's database to *.dba in the ofuser directory.
For example, if there is a file called user123.db make a copy of the file and call it user123.dba. The file must be in the post office's "ofuser" directory.
2. Once you have configured the QuickFinder Resolution Agent for a particular post office profile in GWDR Administration, run a GWDR Standard Backup job.
When the job runs, the QuickFinder Resolution Agent will detect the *.dba file that was newly created. The QRA will then act on that newly created *.dba file.
The "Error Notification" recipient will get an e-mail notifying them of the QRA's detection of the rebuild, and any further steps that need to be taken.
The GWDR System Event Log will also have an entry similar to this:
DATE: Tue_Dec_18 TIME: 03:33:43 PROFILE: BEG2PO - [GRE_DBS] USERID: TKRATZER - Sending QuickFinder Indexing Notification
A User Calls and Says That The Find Feature Doesn't Work or is Extremely Slow
Every GroupWise Administrator has had this problem. This is a clear indication that the user's QuickFinder Indexes need to be rebuilt. Furthermore, the temporary QuickFinder Indexing that the POA does to fulfill the user's search request needlessly uses up CPU cycles.
What is The Purpose of The QuickFinder Resolution Agent?
When a GroupWise user’s database is rebuilt, the QuickFinder Index for that user’s mailbox is deleted. This is working as designed. By default, GroupWise generally rebuilds the entire QuickFinder Index over time for that particular mailbox. However larger mailboxes may never be fully re-indexed, because by default GroupWise does not do a full QuickFinder Index Rebuild on it’s own.
The effect on the end-user whose QuickFinder Index is not rebuilt is that the Find feature in GroupWise goes much slower, and in fact the Find feature may not find all of the items that it should.
This problem can only be resolved by requesting an “Unlimited Indexing Level†rebuild. However, the fact that a user database was rebuilt needs to be detected in order to be resolved. The QRA can detect, report and request a rebuild of a user's QuickFinder Index. The net effect is that a user does not have the days of strange problems related to the Find feature in GroupWise, and the GroupWise administrator does not need to come up with some kind of a detection and resolution procedure for this condition.
How Does the QuickFinder Resolution Agent Work?
Here is what the QRA does.
1. When the GWDR server connects to the live post office, to do a backup, the QRA detects if there are newly created *.dbx files in the ofuser directory. For example: user123.dba or user123.dbb etc.
2. If a *.dbx file was created sometime after the last backup, then the QRA acts.
3. The QRA detects the USERID of the user associated with user123.db. A message is also sent to the “Error Notification†recipients configured in GWDR System Administration.
4. Automatic Actions:
a.) If the QRA has been configured to automatically respond to the need for a QuickFinder Index Rebuild, the QRA will create an HTTP request to the production POA to rebuild the QuickFinder Index for user123.db.
b.) If the QRA has been configured to only detect and report the problem, an HTML message is sent to the “Error Notification†recipients, with a hypertext link that the recipient can click on to direct the QRA to request that the production POA rebuild the QuickFinder Index for user123.db.
The notion behind this choice of options is that some people do not want the QuickFinder Indexing process to just kick in at any time of the day. And so the GWDR administrator can choose which method they prefer.
How Can I Test The QuickFinder Resolution Agent?
1. Make a copy of a user's database to *.dba in the ofuser directory.
For example, if there is a file called user123.db make a copy of the file and call it user123.dba. The file must be in the post office's "ofuser" directory.
2. Once you have configured the QuickFinder Resolution Agent for a particular post office profile in GWDR Administration, run a GWDR Standard Backup job.
When the job runs, the QuickFinder Resolution Agent will detect the *.dba file that was newly created. The QRA will then act on that newly created *.dba file.
The "Error Notification" recipient will get an e-mail notifying them of the QRA's detection of the rebuild, and any further steps that need to be taken.
The GWDR System Event Log will also have an entry similar to this:
DATE: Tue_Dec_18 TIME: 03:33:43 PROFILE: BEG2PO - [GRE_DBS] USERID: TKRATZER - Sending QuickFinder Indexing Notification
Backups During POA QuickFinder Indexing
GroupWise Disaster Recovery uses DBCOPY to backup portions of a GroupWise post office. If QuickFinder Indexing is running, and DBCOPY runs simultaneously with QuickFinder Indexing, then DBCOPY will create an ngwguard.db0 file in the post office. DBCOPY will also create *.db0 files in the OFUSER directory. These files impede a clean backup, but do not hurt the live GroupWise post office. To assure this problem does not happen make sure that an Incremental Backup job does not happen simultaneously with QuickFinder Indexing. If there are already *.db0 files, delete them all, so that backups going forward will work.
Additional Information
This article was originally published in the GWAVA knowledgebase as article ID 2083