Starfish Monitor

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Installation

Beginning with Starfish ETL 3.8, the Starfish Monitor service is included and created when you install the Starfish Scheduler. The Monitor service's Startup Type is set to 'Manual' by default. If you wish to use this service, you should configure the settings (defined below), change the Startup Type to 'Automatic' and start the service. If you are already running a previous version of Starfish ETL, it is recommended that you apply updates to all components of the software, then reinstall the Starfish Scheduler from the installation files to ensure the service is registered correctly.

Intended Purpose

The Starfish Monitor is intended to help ensure uptime for mission-critical systems integrations developed with our ETL tool. There are two components to this service, Monitor and Watchdog.

Monitor is intended to run on the same server as the Starfish Engine. Starfish maintains a log of each time a successful job is run. If your job is supposed to run once every night, then every 24 hours or so this log should be updated. Monitor reviews this log, and if a configured amount of time has past since it has seen an update (in our example say 25 hours) then it will send a notification email to the administrator you've configured. This is useful in cases where perhaps a Windows update has left IIS in a state of needing to be restarted.

Watchdog can be considered an extension of this by ensuring the system is constantly running. It's purpose is to occasionally ping a central server at Starfish ETL, for example every 5 minutes. Our server checks to ensure we've heard from your server successfully in the past 20 minutes (configurable). If we haven't heard from your sever, we'll send a notification to your administrator. This is useful in the case where a server has been unintentionally shut down, loses internet connectivity, or other unforeseen circumstances. If you intend to enable Watchdog, you must inform Starfish ETL Support before so we can enable this feature for your company.

When contacting us to enable Watchdog, please provide your the following pieces of information:

  • Your Starfish ETL license code.
  • The kick interval that you configure below.
  • Your desired fault span (how much time we should allow to pass before notifying you).
  • Email address(es) where we should send fault notices to.

Monitor Service Configuration

The settings below must be configured before enabling the Starfish Monitor service. You will edit the StarfishMonitor.exe.config file which should be in the same folder where Starfish Scheduler was installed.

EnginePath
Location of the 'engine.db' file for the StarfishEngine instance you want to monitor.
ProblemInterval
In seconds, how much time should be allowed to pass since the last successful job was run before sending notifications.
CheckInterval
In seconds, how often the monitor's internal timer should check to see if there are any problems.
SMTPServer
SMTP hostname to use when sending emails. Leave defaults to use the provided Starfish account.
SMTPPort
SMTP server port to use when sending emails. Typically 25 or 587.
SMTPUsername
Username to use for the SMTP connection if authentication is required.
SMTPPassword
Password to use for the SMTP connection if authentication is required.
EnableSSL
Whether the SMTP server's connections (configured above) require an SSL connection.
MailFromAddress
Address the email should appear to have been sent from.
MailFromDisplay
Display name for the address the email should appear to have been sent from.
EmailRecipients
Who to send the notifications to, separate multiples with a comma.
CompanyName
Name of your company - will be used in the notification email that gets sent. If you're using Watchdog (below), this MUST match the Company Name for your Starfish license.
Debug
Logs additional entries to the event log for use when debugging configuration issued. Ensure this is false for production environments.

Watchdog Configuration

The settings below are also configured in the same StarfishMonitor.exe.config file.

WatchdogEnabled
Boolean to enable watchdog. Inform Starfish ETL support before enabling, we must also enable on our side.
LicenseCode
The license code that has been assigned to your company.
WatchdogKickInterval
In seconds, how often the watchdog should update the last time we heard from you. Please keep this at something reasonable like every 5 minutes (300 seconds).

Sample StarfishMonitor.exe.config file

When updating Starfish, the StarfishMonitor.exe.config is not automatically overwritten with a new version. In this case, you may be missing the configuration settings mentioned above. If you have an older version of this file you did not customize, you can overwrite it with this sample. 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
    <configSections>
        <sectionGroup name="applicationSettings" type="System.Configuration.ApplicationSettingsGroup, System, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089">
            <section name="StarfishMonitor.Properties.Settings" type="System.Configuration.ClientSettingsSection, System, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" requirePermission="false"/>
        </sectionGroup>
    </configSections>
    <startup> 
        <supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.0"/>
    </startup>
    <applicationSettings>
        <StarfishMonitor.Properties.Settings>
            <setting name="EnginePath" serializeAs="String">
                <value>C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\StarfishEngine\engine.db</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="ProblemInterval" serializeAs="String">
                <value>14400</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="SMTPServer" serializeAs="String">
                <value>smtp.office365.com</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="SMTPPort" serializeAs="String">
                <value>587</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="EmailRecipients" serializeAs="String">
                <value>monitor@domain.com</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="CompanyName" serializeAs="String">
                <value>Your Company Name</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="MailFromAddress" serializeAs="String">
                <value>monitor@domain.com</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="MailFromDisplay" serializeAs="String">
                <value>Starfish Monitor</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="Debug" serializeAs="String">
                <value>False</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="EnableSSL" serializeAs="String">
                <value>True</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="CheckInterval" serializeAs="String">
                <value>900</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="SMTPUsername" serializeAs="String">
                <value>monitor@domain.com</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="SMTPPassword" serializeAs="String">
                <value>Password</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="WatchdogEnabled" serializeAs="String">
                <value>False</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="LicenseCode" serializeAs="String">
                <value />
            </setting>
            <setting name="WatchdogKickInterval" serializeAs="String">
                <value>300</value>
            </setting>
        </StarfishMonitor.Properties.Settings>
    </applicationSettings>
</configuration>
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