Specifying the Cross-region Heartbeat Interval

When running under Enterprise Server, MFDBFH creates a process record in the cross-region database for each Enterprise Server process that accesses the region and/or cross-region database. This process record has a heartbeat field which, by default, is updated every 5 seconds while the associated Enterprise Server process is active. The heartbeat is used by MFDBFH to determine whether recovery processing is required if the Enterprise Server process is killed or abnormally terminated. MFDBFH deems that recovery processing is required if the process's heartbeat has not been updated within the heartbeat interval plus 5 seconds (that is, with a default heartbeat interval of 5 seconds, recovery processing is deemed to be required if the heartbeat has not been updated after 10 seconds).

The heartbeat interval of a cross-region database can be configured using the heartbeat option of the dbfhconfig command line utility. Changing the default heartbeat interval of 5 seconds should be done with caution, as specifying too large an interval may cause unwanted delays to region recovery. For example, if a heartbeat interval of 60 seconds is configured, a process will only be deemed to require recovery processing after at least 65 seconds has elapsed since the last heartbeat.

Note: A warning message is output to the Enterprise Server console if a heartbeat interval of greater than 15 seconds is configured.