DPA Services Do Not Automatically Start After Reboot of a Linux Server

Data Protection Advisor (DPA) services fail to start automatically on restart of the Operating System. This issue affects Linux systems that use the systemd init process, such as RHEL 7 and later or SUSE 12 and later.
This issue is observed when DPA is installed on a non-root or mounted file system.

The cause of this issue is not fully known at this time.

The systemd process may not convert init.d entries to service files. The systemd process first attempts to start services before mounting file systems on remote mount points. If DPA is installed on a file system that is a remote mount point, the DPA services do not start.

To resolve this issue, create systemd service files to allow the operating system to start the DPA services.

Gather the following information from both the APP and DS servers in the environment:

systemctl | grep .mount

Find the file system where DPA is installed. The output should be similar to the following example:

opt-data.mount - /opt/data

Active: active (mounted) since Tue 2017-07-18 18:00:43 MSK; 5min ago

Process: 742 ExecMount=/bin/mount -n -t xfs -o defaults /dev/disk/by-uuid/4d04e118-0d0a-49d4-b626-e58d1bb82a29 /opt/data (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Run the following commands to determine where the DPA init files are located:

find / -name 'datasvc' -print

find / -name 'agentsvc' -print

find / -name 'applnsvc' -print

These commands return a path. In most cases, the path is either "/etc/rc.d" or "/etc/init.d."

Create the following three systemd service files. These files are plain text files.

• datasvc.service
• applnsvc.service
• agentsvc.service

Create the datasvc.service file on the DS server. Set the SourcePath, ExecStart, and ExecStop values to the datasvc location on the system. For the "After=network-online.target," add the mount point at the end for the mount point where DPA is installed which was gathered from the "systemctl status |grep .mount" command.

[Unit]
SourcePath=/etc/init.d/datasvc
Description=EMC DPA Datastore Service
After=network-online.target opt-data.mount

[Service]
Type=forking
Restart=no
RemainAfterExit=yes
ExecStart=/etc/init.d/datasvc start
ExecStop=/etc/init.d/datasvc stop

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

applnsvc.service
Create this file on the APP server. Set the SourcePath, ExecStart, and ExecStop values to the applnsvc location on the system. For the "After=network-online.target," add the mount point at the end for the mount point where DPA is installed which was gathered from the "systemctl status |grep .mount" command.

[Unit]
SourcePath=/etc/init.d/applnsvc
Description=EMC DPA Application Service
After=network-online.target opt-emc-dpa.mount

[Service]
Type=forking
Restart=no
RemainAfterExit=yes
ExecStart=/etc/init.d/applnsvc start
ExecStop=/etc/init.d/applnsvc stop

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

agentsvc.service
Create this file on both the APP and DS servers. Set the SourcePath, ExecStart, and ExecStop values to the agentsvc location on the system. For the "After=network-online.target," add the mount point at the end for the mount point where DPA is installed which was gathered from the "systemctl status |grep .mount" command. You must make an agent.service file for both the APP agent and the DS agent.

[Unit]
SourcePath=/etc/init.d/agentsvc
Description=EMC DPA Agent Service
After=network-online.target opt-emc-dpa.mount

[Service]
Type=forking
Restart=no
RemainAfterExit=yes
ExecStart=/etc/init.d/agentsvc start
ExecStop=/etc/init.d/agentsvc stop

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

After creating these files, copy the datasvc.service and the agentsvc.service files to the DS server under the /etc/systemd/system directory and the applnsvc.services and agentsvc.service to the /etc/systemd/system directory on the APP server. After all files have been copied, complete the following steps in order.

1. Stop the DPA services on both the APP and DS servers.

2. Run the following commands on the DS server:

   systemctl enable datasvc.service
   systemctl enable agentsvc.service
   
   systemctl start datasvc.service
   systemctl start agentsvc.service

3. Run the following commands on the APP server:

   systemctl enable applnsvc.service
   systemctl enable agentsvc.service
   
   systemctl start applnsvc.service
   systemctl start agentsvc.service

4. Check the DPA services status to ensure that the services are running.

5. Reboot the APP server then the DS server.

6. Run the following commands to confirm that the services started with systemd:
   DS server

   systemctl status datasvc.service
   systemctl status agentsvc.service

   APP server

   systemctl status applnsvc.service
   systemctl status agentsvc.service

7. Check the DPA services status with the following command: dpa svc status

8. If the DPA services did not start, review the three files (datasvc.service, applnsvc.service, and agentsvc.service) for errors.

9. After correcting any errors, repeat steps 1 through 7 to test again.