Hey everyone.
If you've been reading regularly, you'll know that there are a number of ongoing issues with CMOD 8.5. If you are planning an upgrade, I'll simply advise you to do a LOT of testing before moving up, especially if your system is large (multi-terabyte), has a high volume of transactions, or uses the ODWEK CGI.
One of the new features in CMOD 8.5 is support for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) for encrypting network traffic between the CMOD Server and Client. As a part of that, CMOD had it's authentication scheme updated to use a new password hashing algorithm. Due to a bug in the IBM Global Security Kit (GSK) (which provides these SSL & hashing features) on some AIX hardware, performance can be severely impacted. Some customers have seen some files that historically loaded in under a second taking several minutes.
While a workaround is available, it's not perfect. In one site where we implemented the fix, *ALL* loads (rather than some) took several minutes. When we removed the fix, load times went back down to normal -- until the number of loads picked up, and then the multi-minute loads returned.
CMOD 8.5.0.5 had a memory leak, and TSM issues -- please avoid this version entirely.
CMOD 8.5.0.6 has shown intermittent memory errors ("unable to allocate enough memory"), and client side issues with AFP Fonts.
Right now, there's no published fix for the GSKit, so if you're a high-volume system (average more than 1 transaction/sec at any point during the day) I can't recommend upgrading at all. I'm not sure if all of these issues are resolved by CMOD v9, so I can't recommend that either.
If anyone else has outstanding issues with CMOD on v8.5, please feel free to let us know about them here.
-JD.
Thx Justin for this warning.
I just upgraded our dev environment to 8.5.0.6. And i am testing this.
Currently we are running 8.4.0.3 with db2 9.1 on our production environment.
Do you know if this setup is still supported and if so, until when?
Thx.
Michel.
We're running CMOD 8.5.0.6 on AIX and for the most part we aren't seeing any of the issues you're talking about.
We don't use the SSL connection between the clients and server.
We did see a performance hit on one of our older web servers when we first went to ODWEK 8.5.0.3, so we had to
roll back to ODWEK 8.4.1.8.
We do have several clients using the ODWEK CGI API call to query and retrieve documents to the tune of
about 10K-20K queries per hour and 10K-15K retrievals per hour - no issues.
Hey Steve.
I'm not seeing this in every site either, but the sites that have the problems are seriously affected by it, and as I mentioned, the workaround isn't 100% effective. The GSKit bug apparently only affects "some" Power processors. In one site, the DR system is performing perfectly -- but the production system occasionally takes 4 minutes to load a single TIF check image, and processes the next one in 0.7 of a second.
Any insight or advice you have on this bug would go a long way to helping restore my confidence in v8.5.
-JD.
We just completed 8.5.0.6 on our back end with no issues so far, and we performed extensive testing of all types of files, retrieves, etc.
We upgraded our front end to 8.5.0.6 and we were witnessing spontaneous crashes, which caused us to point to our contingency site.
Currently, we are using front end version 8.4.1.6 and back end 8.5.0.6 with no issues while our java/websphere people work on some PMRs.
Yeah, by keeping clients at 8.4.x, you continue to use the old authentication method, which doesn't require a call to the GSKit.
-JD.
besides EOL concerns is there any major risk running odwek at 8.4 and cmod at 8.5.0.6?
Jeff - I don't know how pervasive this is but....
http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21592502 (http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21592502)
Content Manager OnDemand V8.4.1.x ODWEK CGI/Servlet issue with CacheFile
authentication against 8.5.x OnDemand servers
Problem(Abstract)
Running a Content Manager OnDemand Web Enablement Kit (ODWEK) CGI/Servlet
version prior to PTF 8.4.1.8 against an 8.5.x OnDemand server can result in
increased logon/logoff traffic to the OnDemand Server due to an issue with
authentication during CacheFile restoration.
Thanks Ed!
Morning Everyone,
We are just now upgrading to Version 8.5. It's a large environment. We run Z/OS with windows servers hosting ODWEK, WEBi and we're using CGI. Can anyone give me some info concerning the ODWEK 8.5.0.6 install on Windows? Will it work on a Windows 2003 server? I've even tried to load it on a 2008 Windows box to no avail. Any assist would be awesome! Thanks. I really enjoy this group.
Hi Steven.
Can you give us a hint as to why it's not working? An error message, or how your expectations differ from your results?
-JD.
When testing 8.5.0.6 will also, saw increased ARSLOAD process time. We were first told to upgrade GSKit v8 to v14, that didn't help. We were then told other customers were reporting this load time problem. The fix for us were applying ICC environment variables in our startup scripts and relevant users.
Set ICC environment variables in user (root,archive,ondadm) and arsx0001,start_ond scripts
export ICC_IGNORE_FIPS=yes
export ICC_TRNG=ALT
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21614548
Yeah, I'm aware of the fix, but there isn't really a CMOD-specific technote for it. I'm experimenting on a customer's QA system now to come up with some documentation.