Animations being backlogged
Document ID : KB000116964
Last Modified Date : 04/10/2018
 Show Technical Document Details
Issue:
CA Service Desk administrator is seeing the message below in stdlog:

38005 animations pending from now to 10/03/2018 19:00:30; 37993 backlogged
Environment:
CA Service Desk 17.1
CA Service Desk 17.0
CA Service Desk 14.1
Cause:
Animations are processed by the Animator (animator_nxd) process.

See below the animator process overview:
  • Manages events (animators)
  • Fetches Animator table
  • Gets domset based on interval time
  • Handles the queue of animators
  • Adds and deletes animators from the database
When Animator (animator_nxd) is not working properly, animations start being backlogged and a lot of side-effect can occur e.g. delayed events, auto-closing not working as expected, CA Service Management not sending processes to CA IT Process Automation.
Resolution:
For simple conventional mode installation, sometimes restarting all servers can fix this issue. It is useful when animator_nxd stopped processing events because of communication issues between CA Service Desk processes. For more complex situations, consider adding a dedicated domsrvr to the Animator (animator_nxd) process.

See references below:

Creating a dedicated Domsrvr to the Animator Process for CA Service Desk Manager (SDM) r12.9 and r14.1 in Conventional Mode

Creating a dedicated Domsrvr to the Animator Process for CA Service Desk Manager (SDM) r12.9 r14.1 and r17.x in Advanced Availability (AA) Mode

Reference for troubleshooting Animators:
  • pdm_logstat -f animator_nxd.c 300
  • pdm_extract Animator
  • pdm_extract Attached_Events