How does your SIA start?

If you are running a development environment in which you have the BusinessObjects XI 3.0 server running on the same physical box as your BusinessObjectcs repository, you have run into a common problem.  In XI 3.0, the SIA is dependent on the repository and if the repository database is unavailable the SIA will failed to start and not retry.

Service Dependencies in Windows

In my case, I am using Microsoft SQL Server as my BusinessObjects repository database.  Therefore I need to make sure that Microsoft SQL Server is up and running before the SIA attempts to start.  Microsoft Windows accommodates this by allowing you to create service dependencies.  In our case, it will guarantee that  Microsoft SQL Server service is running before the SIA service attempts to start.

Changing the Configuration

Let’s walk through the process of setting up a dependency to the SIA will start automatically.

  1. Start the CCM and select the SIA Service. The SIA service must be stopped before you make your changes.

  2. Next, Choose Properties and Dependency

  3. Lastly choose Add and select SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER) from the list of available services.

  4. After you add the dependency you will see:

Now each time the SIA attempts to start, it will first check and verify that in addition to the Event Log servcie and the RPC service are running, the SQL Server service must also running before it attempts to start.

Do you have Multiple SIAs?

If you have multiple SIA’s, you should add this dependency to each one so that anytime the server reboots, the SIA will start correctly.

One Last Thing You’ll Want to Know

You may also which to modify the “Recovery” properties of your SIA Service so that in case it fails to start, it will attempt to restart.  To change these properties you will need to go into to Windows Services.

  1. Start > Run and type in services.msc

  2. Go to the Recover Tab and change the Restart service after value to 1.


Getting It Right Every Time

Adding these few dependencies will help to make sure that you never have any problems getting your CMS to start during the normal system restart.  If you have made any modifications to the start-up process of your BusinessObjects server, I would love to hear what you’ve done!

«Good BI»

3 replies on “How does your SIA start?”

  1. Good post. The issues were the same with XI R2, and it was always a good idea to make the CMS dependent on the database server (if it sat on the same machine).

    It is also a good idea (in XI R2) to make all the other BO services dependent on the CMS, so they won’t try to start up until the CMS has started. As I understand, the SIA takes care of this for us now.

    – Josh

  2. Hello Dave,

    How to set dependenies if CMS & Repository DB are on seperate boxes as it is generally the best practice for big deployments ?

    – Vamsi Ch

    1. This is a great question Vamsi. I don’t know the answer. I’m sure there much be tool available to check for the existence of service running on remote machines, but I don’t have any experience with them. My question though is… if it’s on a different server why do you need to dependency? Should the database server already be up when you reboot the BO server??? Why would you ever reboot them both at the same time? That seems odd.

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