24/7 CCPulse Challenges

[pdavid]

Ok well I'm in the beginning stages of setting up my command center, mission control, WFM - whatever other names are used for it. We are wanting to use a dedicated machine to just run CCPulse on for the email alert function, because of different department hours, it needs to be ran 24/7, however the issue I'm having is that the CCPulse typically loses connection to the Stat Server around the evenings and weekends. Before I go any further, let me state that I don't have access to the logs, in my workplace we have the Genesys Tech Team, and they care for all of that fun stuff. Anyhow to get back on track, I understand that at times due to maintenance the Stat Server needs to be restarted, my tech knowledge is minmal, but is there a way to run CCPulse 24/7 w/o losing connection to the Stat Server, running it on it's own server, or perhaps a dedicated stat server? I have even asked for me to recieve an email alert from SCI if communication to Stat Server is lost, as my plan was to remote desktop into the dedicated machine and restart CCPulse, however after I asked for this access, they freaked out and my request for RDP from outside of my network was declined, that being said then I need a solution to have the machine run 24/7.

Sorry to ramble on, but is there any solutions to this? I'm looking at having my developers create a script that runs every 30 mins after 9am est and if CCPulse is not running to somehow execute it. Again my tech knowledge is minimal so not sure if this is even possible. If anyone can chime in and provide me some alternatives that would be appreciated so I could entertain them with my internal G Team.

[cavagnaro]

Lost connection to StatServer? But does StatServer goes down? It's should never happen. You are connected to StatServerReporting right? Not to the StatServer itself which never should go down unless a big a change.
StatServerReporting only might down when creating new stats or options, but normally don't.
Also CCPulse should be able to reconnect to StatServerReporting.
I do have a CCPulse running 24x7 and doesn't have those issues, have you checked your network enviroment?

[tony]

A novel idea is to run an instance of your CCPulse on the same Server as your StatServer, if it is possible (WINTEL, rather than UNIX).  Search the threads in this Forum - the command line for start-up within a Server is in here, somewhere...

HTH?

Tony

[victor]

David,

usually your CCP should never disconnect from StatServer. If it does, there are several reasons for it.
In fact, disconnecting from StatServer means you will be losing some of your stats, since depending on the template you use, some statistics will be shown from the time your CCP started monitoring it, and not the actual stats.

Most frequent reasons are:

1. network is bad
2. you are polling way too many statistics, which may cause StatServer to issue "client too slow" and disconnect you
3. you are connected to a StatServer that is either being polled by DataSourcer (which is done every 15 minutes usually) and guessing from your email that you have a rather big call center(s), it means that your StatServer might be unresponsive for up to few minutes due to a really dumb design of how Datasourcer gets the stats. (in case you are not using CCA, ignore this)

My suggestion to you would be:

1. identify what stats you need. Get rid of all the other stats from your CCP template
2. ensure that you are connected to a StatServer that is able to handle your load. To give you an example, we have 8 StatServers running for our 1600+ seat call center, with one dedicated to CCA, one dedicated to routing, one CCP statserver watching ALL the sites, and then CCP statservers dedicated to a particular site. And of course, we have a backup for each one of them.

If you have WFM, it means a great deal of stat polling by that product alone!
Have your Genesys people identify the loads on every statserver and tell you which one would be the best one for you.

Word of advice: by default statserver dumps ssbackup.000 file every fifteen minutes. This file is intended to be used should your statserver goes down - it will read the latest stat values from the file on restart.  If you are running a very large call center, this file can be several hundred megabytes long! We disable this feature on most of our CCP.

Logging and writing to DB tables is another option that your Genesys team should look into. Turn them off if you don't need them. I remember hearing a few years back that StatServer is a single-process application, meaning that it does not multi-task. Perhaps, it has changed in the last few releases, but usually it is the most CPU intensive and memory hoaging application I have ever seen.

So, I would strongly encourage you to have your people check it out, because disconnecting from stat Server is an indication of a potentially serious problem.

Best regards,
vic

[pdavid]

Thanks alot for the responses, in the next couple of days I will be sharing this with my tech team to see what's the best solution and to point out any future issues in the works.

The responses are greatly appreciated.

[victor]

Pleasure, as usual.
Please do write a follow up telling us what was the cause and how you have dealt with it.
All of us will benefit from it. 

[eugene]

pdavid, does your SS have a backup that runs on hot standby?

I rarely hear about disconnection from statserver in CCP.  It would be very helpful if you work with the network team to set up sniffers between the statserver box and the box running CCP for the times that you notice it's frequently going down (assuming some sort of evening range between 8pm  - 12am or something)

Anyhow please follow up and let us know when you find out the issue.

et

[rosshartford]

We had an issue with StatServer restarting due to Java garbage collection pausing the StatServer process too long while the GC was running.  I received this from Genesys Tech Support this week:

Release Number 7.5.000.16 [03/07/2007] – General
-------------
When Java Extensions are loaded, Stat Server no longer intermittently terminates upon receiving the EventUserEvent TEvent from T-Server. (ER# 55601111)
------------

[overkill]

Hey guys

Sorry for digging up an old topic but I'm also interested if someone has come up with a solution.
I keep several several instances of ccpulse running on a machine in order to send me an e-mail when a certain statistic is triggered. Sometimes they lose the connection to the statservers due to the fact that they connect to remote statservers across the globe and of course the network may go down.
Is there no way to make the ccpulse reconnect automatically to the statserver instead of popping up the "do you want to reconnect?" box?
So far the only solution I can think of is to make a scheduled task to automatically kill and reopen the ccpulse every once in a while....

[tony]

Hi,

Not sure of your Infrastrcutre OS - but have you considered running instances of CCP+ on the same box as the Reporting StatServer?

TT

[BenTaylor]

I believe CCPulse 8.0 can be configured to automatically reconnect to backup StatServer.