Can’t re-connect after Cerner Millenium recycles

[Terence Gucwa]

If a Cerner Millenium server, the receiving system, has to recycle for some reason, Cloverleaf seems to think it’s still up, and stays in the “up” status.  But Cerner had recycled in that time, so no data is actually sent.  I can bring the Cloverleaf outbound thread up and down, and still nothing goes across.  Then suddenly it seems ok after they fuss with it some more.

Has someone had experience with this issue?  Are there special instructions I should tell the Cerner side?  Or maybe an operating system (AIX for Cloverleaf) parameter that needs changing?

Topic

[Jim Kosloskey]

Terence,

Have you checked the Process log to make sure Cloverleaf is seeing the Server go away?

I suspect you are not seeing that but check.

Is this going through a firewall or VPN (probably not a VPN but could be a firewall).

If the firewall is not configured correctly it does not release the port for some time (maybe not at all and that is why they are ‘fussing’ with it).

Good luck getting the firewall admin (if there is a firewall) sharing any real information with you.

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 29+ years Cloverleaf, 59 years IT - old fart.

[Terence Gucwa]

Just before it did start, I see:

[pdl :PDL :ERR /0:     pemrs_ob:09/01/2011 12:24:22] read failed: Connection reset by peer

[pdl :PDL :ERR /0:     pemrs_ob:09/01/2011 12:24:22] read returned error 73 (Connection reset by peer)

[pdl :PDL :ERR /0:     pemrs_ob:09/01/2011 12:24:22] PDL signaled exception: code 1, msg device error (remote side probably shut down)

But not when it I “should” have seen it shut down, some time before.

[Jim Kosloskey]

Terence,

If this occurred some time after they stopped their connection on their side, then I would say the port is not being immediately released. When you finally see the log entry is when the prot is actually being released.

Check to see if there is a firewall involved.

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 29+ years Cloverleaf, 59 years IT - old fart.

[Mike Campbell]

Terence,  are you checking the connections in OpenViewController?  Perhaps one of the Cerner processes isn’t set to restart automatically.

[Terence Gucwa]

OpenView Controller.  Don’t have that, but I certainly think that Cerner is not releasing the connection when they say they are.  They aren’t real open about all this.

[Kevin Scantlan]

If the Cerner server that is being recycled is not bringing down the interface, the connection would stay up.  Based upon the timing of the cycling, it could be a situation where you sent a message, but the ACK didn’t get sent due to cycling.  So, if you are waiting on the ACK, but it’s not coming you could wait forever.  Do you have your timeout/resend turned on?

[Andrea Mancini]

Has anyone resolved this?

[Michael Sisco]

We have an issue similar to that, but it may have more to do with the firewall than it does Cerner.

Typically, the only way that we can get it to start working again is just restart both ends around the same time.

We also have an alert setup that checks if there are a bunch of messages queued up in one of our feeds to Cerner, and it restarts all of the Cerner connections then, assuming something could be wrong with the firewall.

We have to clear xlates in the firewall every once in awhile, pretty much anytime we need to NAT a new device to communicate with Cerner. So, we have to restart the connections pretty frequently.

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