Symptom

Scenario 1: vmsDbEngine (Sybase) process fails to start on FMC with assertion failure errors like under: "Assertion failed: 200138 (17.0.10.5745)[vms]. Can't find values for row 6181:8 in index 'attribute'" This vmsDbEngine error will be part of /var/opt/CSCOpx/MDC/log/operation/sydb.out file. This failure code indicates index corruption on some database table. The table name is not evident from the message - but the index name should help identifying the table. Scenario 2: Table validation functionality (typically executed during backup generation) reports failure messages resembling: VALIDATE TABLE "DBA"."EORevisionStore" Row count mismatch between table "EORevisionStore" and index "EORevisionStore"

Conditions

This issue is specific to SQL Anywhere, used as part of FMC versions 7.2.x & earlier. These errors do not apply to FTD devices. Index corruptions typically are result of abrupt shutdown of the database, which happens in case of power failures or disk/communication issues as in the case of network issues with HA setups

Workaround

Corrupt indexes may cause issues either during the DB engine startup or may cause crashes later, only when the problematic table contents are being accessed. Same issue sometimes leads to scenario 2 where the database runs fine, but content/schema validation reports mismatch between index & actual table contents. The proper workaround to fix the issue is to rebuild the index on the problematic table manually. An index is the internal data used by the database to speed up the table access. So rebuilding indexes will not cause any data loss. Refer to https://infocenter.sybase.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.sybase.help.sqlanywhere.12.0.1/dbusage/rebuildingindexes.html for steps to rebuild index for a Sybase table. The exact table whose index needs to be rebuilt, should be identified based on the 'index' name in the error message and the Sybase schema definition on the FMC.

Further Problem Description