Ghost Peer to Peer multicast imaging randomly fails

Products

• Deployment Solution

Issue/Introduction

When using the Peer to Peer multicasting built into Ghost (using -mp switch), client machines will randomly drop out of the multicast 

Ghost doesn't provide any logs that help to determine what is causing the issue.

Environment

GSS 3.x and DS 8.x

Cause

By default, the client systems (slave systems) wait one second to receive data from the master system (the one in charge of the multicast session). If a response is not received within that second, the client systems fail-over to unicast. 

Resolution

The issue can be worked around by adding the parameter '-readtimeout' to the command line and giving it a value of '-2'. E.g '-readtimeout=2'.  This command tells the client to wait '2' seconds for the master to respond before dropping into a unicast session.  This value can be raised further should the issue continue to occur.

Steps to add the switch:

GSS

Add '-readtimeout=2' to the imaging jobs command line parameters

DS 8.x

1. Select the Deploy image task
2. Click on the 'Advanced' Button
3. Under command line options enter '-readtimeout=2'
4. Click 'OK'
5. Click 'Save Changes'