Symantec Access Management

I apologise if this has been answered already.

I have 2 simple questions. Today , I have run into an issue of file space exhausted for the first time in years. We ran load tests in our non prod, warn_log showed some alerts regarding % and in 2 days we saw the file grew from 60% to 100% eventually making the server unusable.

I have increased db grid size to 1GB from 100MB (default, I dont recall modifying it )and server is operational now.

My questions are:

 I noticed the size of the .db file shows as 1GB, but I dont think I have enough entries to fill up 1GB .  Am I reading this correctly? There are 120,000 siteminder sessions in there as of now. 

-rw-r-----  1 dsa etrdir 954M Jan 25 13:44 sessionstore.db

Is it possible the dsa process created a file of 1GB as per the config, and updates information in it as needed? If so, is it possible to know how much of the available 1 GB I am currently using? Warn_log shows alerts after I hit 50-60 % but I am asking for my own curiosity.

2. How do I empty an existing database? I dont want to delete and recreate a DSA and go through the process of setting up SiteMinder policy store , session store schemas.. I just want to know if there is a simple one command to remove everything from sessionstore.db. 

Thanks everyone in advance.

I found the answer to empty database:

dxemptydb DSA

This worked well for me. Hope it helps someone else.

Sam 

What version of CA SSO is being used.

R12.52 SP1 CR05 and upwards (including R12.6) have new performance improvements in CA SSO Policy Server to (LDAP / ODBC) Session Store. Also incase of LDAP (i.e. CA Directory) there is one more trick up the sleeve than ODBC for improving performance. This release of CA SSO primarily focussed on Session Store Performance and improvements.

Session Store Troubleshooting - CA Single Sign-On - 12.52 SP1 - CA Technologies Documentation 

Regards

Hubert

Thanks, Hubert. 

My policy server version is : FullVersion=12.52.105.2113. I still have trouble with that naming but I think we are at R1252SP1CR5. 

That is correct. You are on the correct version to use the new Registry settings....

Also a few more Key Considerations for Session Store

• For extreme performance requirements, physical hardware should be used instead of VMWare for CA Directory, unless expertise and time is available to address intricacies of VMWare optimization.

• Do not index all session store attributes for existing deployments.
  • Default should be smSessionId, smExpirationTime, smIdleExpirationTime, smSearchData, smVariableName, smFullVariableName.
  • Extreme cases should only use smSessionId.

• For CA Directory, consider disabling CA directory transaction logging. Use default single queue, and enable updates before long searches.
  • set disable-transaction-log = true; OR set disable-transaction-log-flush = true;
  • use single queue in front of DSA instead of one queue per thread set dxgrid-queue = true;

• Use partitions with each partition on a separate machine.
  • Ensure enough memory so all data for a single partition can reside in physical RAM.

Regards

Hubert

As for your original question

"Is it possible the dsa process created a file of 1GB as per the config, and updates information in it as needed? If so, is it possible to know how much of the available 1 GB I am currently using? Warn_log shows alerts after I hit 50-60 % but I am asking for my own curiosity."

Yes it does. When you create a new DSA, CA Directory pre-allocates the DB Size as per what is defined in the dxnewdsa creation command. The default is 500MB, so if nothing is mentioned it pre-allocates 500MB and creates a .db file of 500MB with zero data and default schema (as per default Schema file).

Therefore if you used -s flag and defined it to be 1GB, then what you see as a brand new "sessionstore.db" of size around 1GB is correct. It will be an empty DB of 1GB, and will get updated as writes happen.

Regards

Hubert

If so, is it possible to know how much of the available 1 GB I am currently using? Warn_log shows alerts after I hit 50-60 % but I am asking for my own curiosity.

The $DXHOME/logs/{dsaNAme}_trace.log logs the following message during dxserver startup

* [192] 20170424.011709.024 DSA_I1150 DXgrid file usage: Filesize 512000000 Used bytes 255995170 (50%) Reclaimable bytes 149608