GridLink Utility:
Farm Maintenance Features

The user can perform the following actions under "Maintenance" menu.

• Suspend/Resume Farm

The user can suspend the farm to perform maintenance if necessary. After a farm is suspended, jobs that have already started on the farm will continue to run, but all pending jobs will stay in pending status until the farm is resumed.

• Backup Manager

If the user has set up a "Backup Information Path" in the Farm Settings, then he/she can use "Backup Manager" to schedule backups on the farm. For more details about Active Backup, click here.

• Take Helper Servers Offline / Bring Helper Servers Online

The user can take helper servers offline for maintenance (install operating system patch, perform anti-virus scan, backup, etc.) and then bring them back online later. The administrator can do this even when an AXIS job is running on the farm. AXIS helpers running on these server are closed automatically when they are taken offline (the helpers may take time to finish the current task in some cases), and will start automatically when they are brought online again..

• Compact Job History Database

The job history database GCDB.mdb includes all historic job records and it will grow bigger and bigger even if some jobs are deleted from the job list. Although GridLink performs the automatic compact on start-up, the user may need to manually compact the database if GridLink has been up and running for a long time.

• Update Licence File

For users who have a trial GridLink licence, when they have received a permanent licence file or one with extended trial period, they can use this feature to update the licence file on all servers. This doesn't require a service restart and can be done even when the farm is busy running AXIS jobs.