Network communications

In a HCL Workload Automation network, agents communicate with their domain managers, and domain managers communicate with their parent domain managers. There are basically two types of communications that take place:
  • Start-of-production period initialization (distribution of new Symphony file)
  • Scheduling events in the form of change-of-state messages during the production period

Before the start of each new production period, the master domain manager creates a production control file called Symphony. Then, HCL Workload Automation is restarted in the network, and the master domain manager sends a copy of the new Symphony file to each of its automatically-linked agents and subordinate domain managers. The domain managers, in turn, send copies to their automatically-linked agents and subordinate domain managers. Agents and domain managers that are not set up to link automatically are initialized with a copy of Symphony as soon as a link operation is run in HCL Workload Automation.

Once the network is started, scheduling messages, like job starts and completions, are passed from the agents to their domain managers, through parent domain managers to the master domain manager. The master domain manager then broadcasts the messages throughout the hierarchical tree to update the Symphony files of all domain managers and the domain managers forward the messages to all fault-tolerant agents in their domain running in FullStatus mode.