Status messages will be, and should be,
your first stop when you’re trying to understand an SMS process or to
troubleshoot a problem on your site. However, in addition to status
messages, you can also study the log files that each component can
generate. Log files provide an even greater level of detail in
describing how an SMS component is functioning, especially in relation
to other components.
After all, there are over 40 different SMS
components and services that can generate log files. In addition, each
log file can hold up to 1 MB of data before archiving that data to an
archive log. Altogether, if all component logs and archive logs were
full, the server would require over 80 MB worth of storage space just
for these files.
On the other hand, log
files are enabled on SMS clients by default because the number of
client components is considerably less and so that the SMS
administrator doesn’t have to visit a client to enable logging. Also,
each log file defaults to 256 KB in size.
SMS
Service Manager is also used to monitor the status of components.
Unlike the Status Message Viewer, SMS Service Manager provides an
at-a-glance view of SMS components and services running on the site
server and on each site system. As shown in Figure 1,
you can see the status of each component represented both as an icon
preceding each entry and in the Status field, the server the component
is running on, the last time the component was polled, and the component
type. The icon preceding each entry appears only after you query each
component for its current status by right-clicking it and choosing
Query from the context menu. Using the same technique, you can also
stop, pause, and resume component activity.
Tip
If
you want to stop all the SMS Executive threads, stop the
SMS_SITE_COMPONENT_MANAGER first and then stop SMS_EXECUTIVE using SMS
Service Manager, because the Site Component Manager might attempt to
restart the SMS Executive if it’s stopped. The Windows Services
administrative tool also enables you to stop these services; however,
using SMS Service Manager is the preferred method. |
Tip
Just
because an SMS component is listed as stopped doesn’t necessarily mean
that there’s a problem with the service. Some services, like
SMS_NETWORK_DISCOVERY, highlighted in Figure 1,
run on a predetermined or administrator-defined schedule. It’s
important to familiarize yourself with viewing status messages and log
files so that you can determine whether a component problem exists. |
