Change Server Settings Live

Highly critical systems that must have the highest availability possible share one problem: when can I do adjustment in the server settings? A change in a setting for a server often requires a restart of that particular service. This type of manoeuvre is often scheduled at night or weekends, once a quarter perhaps.


But if you want to change many of the settings in the different servers you can accomplish this without restarting the service. I don't know it this is a technique that is supported from Business Objects. But I can't really see why you couldn't do it this way!

Here is how you do it:

One server scenario

1. Create another server with the correct settings.
2. Enable and start the new server.
3. Disable the old server.
4. Wait until no one is connected to the old server.
5. Shut the old server down.
6. Remove the old server.

Multiple servers scenario

1. Disable one server.
2. Wait until no one is connected to the disabled server.
3. Shut the disabled server down.
4. Change the setting for the stopped server.
5. Start the stopped server and enable it.
6. Repeat from step 1 with the next server.

Why is this working? When you disable a server it still operates with the requests it currently working with but it will not accept any new ones. When the server has served all requests and is idle it can be shut down.

One thing that could be interesting to clarify is how you determine if the server is busy or idle before shutting it down. This depends on which server to shut down. In this example I show how to determine this for Web Intelligence Report Server. For other servers it differs slightly but the base procedure is the same.

For Web Intelligence Report Server:

Goto Home > Servers > #SERVERNAME#.Web_IntelligenceReportServer > Tab Metrics. At the bottom of that page there is a value to observe, Current Requests. When this number is zero it is OK to shut the server down.