000036795 - RSA Archer users are unable to login while Applications / Questionnaires are being created or updated

Document created by RSA Customer Support Employee on Oct 1, 2018•Last modified by RSA Customer Support Employee on Mar 7, 2019
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Article Number000036795
Applies ToRSA Product Set: Archer
RSA Product/Service Type: RSA Archer (On-Premise)
RSA Version/Condition: 6.4.0.2
Platform: Windows
IssueWhile a user is created or updating applications or questionnaires in the application builder, users are not able to log into the system while this is in progress. 

Additionally, this can happen while installing packages that create or update permissions on existing applications or questionnaires.

Symptom (manual login):
After clicking the login button on the Archer login page, the page continues to load for a long period of time but does not log the user into the system. The users will continue to see the Archer login page.

Symptom (Single Sign On ):
The Archer site loads continuously without logging the user in.   Users may see a blank white page or a page that takes a long time to load, or does not load.
 
CauseWhen creating a new application or questionnaire, or when updating the permissions of an existing application or questionnaire, the user account permissions need to be rebuilt for every user account in the system.   

In most cases this takes only a few seconds, but instances with over 20,000 users may observe a noticeable period of time where users are unable to access the Archer instance while this process is being completed.
ResolutionThis issue has been fixed in
Archer 6.4 SP1 Patch 3 (6.4.1.3)
Archer 6.5 Patch 1  (6.5.0.1)
And later versions.

 
WorkaroundThe process of updating the application permissions will block logins while it is running, however the performance of this process can be improved so the login delay is no longer noticeable.

To improve the performance of this process to make it less impacting of end users:

 



  1. Rebuild all indexes on the tblUserModuleAccess table.
    Go to SSMS -> search for tblUserModuleAccess ->indexes -> Right click on "PK_tblUserModuleAccess" ->Rebuild index
      Note: It is important to have regular SQL maintenance jobs that rebuild indexes on a schedule, as needed.
  2. Create this index against the Archer instance database

    CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX ARCHER47759_tblUserModuleAccess_module_id
    ON [dbo].[tblUserModuleAccess] ([module_id])
    INCLUDE ([user_id])

    IMPORTANT: This index should be removed before upgrading to 6.4 SP1 Patch 3 or later.

    After applying the above changes, the duration of time users were not able to access the Archer instance decreased from 300 seconds to as low as 74 seconds, per application created/updated.   This was on an Archer instance that had 360,000 users total.

    Additional note:  If possible, schedule application creates/updates and application package installs to be performed at a time when few users are trying to access the Archer instance.

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