Automatically register agents to pools

The dynamic agent installation process automatically adds the workstation definition to the database and registers the workstation definition to the dynamic workload broker installed on the master domain manager or the dynamic domain manager that you specify during the installation process.

You can add dynamic agents in pools to help organize your environment based on the availability of workstations and the requirements of the jobs to be run. Normally, when you create a pool, you add the dynamic agents to a workstation definition of type pool.

Starting from HCL Workload Automation version 9.4 Fix Pack 4, you can automatically register dynamic agents in pools by editing the pools.properties file located in TWS_home>/ITA/cpa/config.

Starting from version 9.5, the pools.properties file is located in the following paths:
On Windows operating systems
<TWS_home>\ITA\cpa\config
On UNIX operating systems
<TWA_DATA_DIR>/ITA/cpa/config

This alternative way of registering dynamic agents to a pool can be useful when you need to quickly add more than one agent to a pool, or when you want to associate multiple pools to a dynamic agent.

The file is composed by a series of lines with a list of pools to which the agent will be automatically registered. To make the changes in this file effective on the agent, you must stop the agent, edit the file, then start the agent. See ShutDownLwa - Stop the agent and StartUpLwa - Start the agent.

For example, if you want to register a dynamic agent with three different pools, then edit the pools.properties file as follows:
POOL1
POOL2
POOL3
By default, master domain manager and backup domain manager dynamic agents register with the pool named MASTERAGENTS. In this case, the pools.properties file on these agents contains the following default entry:
$MASTERAGENTS
Note: The default name for this pool workstation, MASTERAGENTS, can be modified using the optman global option resubmitJobName. See Global options - detailed description for details about this option.
The following options are supported for each entry in the pool.properties file:
;skip

Use this option to exclude pools from even being considered. You might want to ignore specific pools for a period of time, but still maintain them in the list so that they can be considered in the future.

;optional

Use this option to specify that a pool is not obligatory, but optional, so that if the agent is unable to register to a pool, for example, a pool no longer exists) then the pool is ignored.

If an agent has obligatory pools in the pools.properties file that are not defined in the system, then the agent will not be able to automatically register and go online. To ensure agent connectivity, these options can be used to manage situations where the agent needs to online even if some pools are not defined.

If the agent does not receive any errors, then the agent goes online and is added to all of the pools in the list, except for those with the ;skip option specified.

If, instead, the agent encounters an error, the agent is able to determine which of the pools in the list has a problem. If the problematic pool is mandatory (without the ;optional option specified), then the agent goes offline and is not added to any of the pools. If the problematic pool is optional (with the ;optional option specified), the pool is discarded.

To demonstrate how you can use these options in the pool.properties file, consider the following example:
$MASTERAGENTS;optional
POOL1
POOL2;skip
POOL3;optional;skip
POOL4;optional
Case 1: POOL1 and POOL4 exist, MASTERAGENTS does not exist
  • POOL2;skip is not considered at all.
  • POOL3;optional;skip is not considered at all because the ;skip option overrides the ;optional option.
  • MASTERAGENTS;optional is the problematic pool and is optional and therefore not considered by the agent.
  • POOL1 is not a problematic pool.
  • POOL4 is not a problematic pool.
Outcome: The agent goes online and is inserted in POOL1 and POOL4.
Case 2: POOL1 does not exist, MASTERAGENTS and POOL4 exist
  • POOL2;skip is not considered at all.
  • POOL3;optional;skip is not considered at all because the ;skip option overrides the ;optional option.
  • MASTERAGENTS;optional is not a problematic pool.
  • POOL1 is the problematic pool and is mandatory and cannot be discarded.
  • POOL4 is not a problematic pool.
Outcome: The agent goes offline and is not inserted in any of the pools.