The driver heartbeat is a feature of the Identity Manager drivers that ship with Identity Manager 2 and above. Its use is optional. Driver heartbeat is configured by using a driver parameter with a time interval specified. If a heartbeat parameter exists and has an interval value other than 0, the driver sends a heartbeat document to the Metadirectory engine if there is no communication on the Publisher channel for the specified interval of time.
The intent of the driver heartbeat is to give you a trigger to allow you to initiate an action at regular intervals, in case the driver does not communicate on the Publisher channel as often as you want the action to occur. You must customize your driver configuration or other tools if you want to take advantage of the heartbeat. The Metadirectory engine accepts the heartbeat document but does not take any action because of it.
For most drivers, a driver parameter for heartbeat is not used in the sample configurations, but you can add it.
A custom driver that is not provided with Identity Manager can also provide a heartbeat document, if the driver developer has written the driver to support it.
To configure the heartbeat, do the following:
In iManager, click .
Browse to and select your Driver Set, then click .
In Identity Manager Overview screen click the upper right corner of the driver icon, then click .
On the Identity Manager tab, click , scroll down to Driver Parameters, and look for Heart Beat or a similar display name.
If a driver parameter already exists for heartbeat, you can change the interval and save the changes, and configuration is complete.
The value of the interval cannot be less than 1. A value of 0 means the feature is turned off.
The unit of time is usually minutes; however, some drivers might choose to implement it differently, such as using seconds.
If a driver parameter does not exist for heartbeat, click Edit XML.
Add a driver parameter entry like the following example, as a child of <publisher-options>. (For an AD driver, make it a child of <driver-options>.)
<pub-heartbeat-interval display-name="Heart Beat">10</pub-heartbeat-interval>
HINT:If the driver does not produce a heartbeat document after being restarted, check the placement of the driver parameter in the XML.
Save the changes, and make sure the driver is stopped and restarted.
After you have added the driver parameter, you can edit the time interval using the graphical view. Another option is to create a reference to a global configuration value (GCV) for the time interval. Like other global configuration values, the driver heartbeat can be set at the Driver Set level instead of on each individual driver object. If a driver does not have a particular global configuration value, and the Driver Set does have it, the driver inherits the value from the Driver Set.
The following is an example heartbeat status document sent by the Notes driver:
<nds dtdversion="2.0" ndsversion="8.x">
<source>
<product build="20031112_1037" instance="blackcap" version="2.0">DirXML Driver for Lotus Notes</product>
<contact>Novell, Inc.</contact>
</source>
<input>
<status level="success" type="heartbeat"/>
</input>
</nds>