Setup distsrv package forwarding

Products

DX Unified Infrastructure Management (Nimsoft / UIM) CA Unified Infrastructure Management On-Premise (Nimsoft / UIM) CA Unified Infrastructure Management SaaS (Nimsoft / UIM)

Issue/Introduction

The distsrv probe has a forwarding feature to reduce network load and help with package distribution speed
Rather than push a probe package multiple times over a Wide Area Network (WAN) you can have another copy of the archive on other hubs
The distsrv will forward packages on an interval increasing performance of probe deployments and updates and reducing load on the primary distsrv
The distsrv forwarding function is ideal in a multi-tiered hub environment connected via tunnels or slow bandwidth links.
You need to have multiple distsrvs in the environment, one on the primary hub (by default) and remote distsrvs under other hubs.

Environment

Version: Any
Component: distsrv

Resolution

On the Primary hub distsrv:

1. Open the distsrv configuration > Setup tab > Forwarding tab and turn on 'Forwarding active' and 'Always forward license with package'

2. Select 'Use remote distsrv on distribution' on the 'Advanced settings' tab

3. Create a Forwarding record via the Forwarding tab

Right click the whitespace
Select 'Add Record'
In the Server Field, select the other distsrv distribution you wish to push packages to...
Select the Type of forwarding you wish to enable - the most common are listed below.

Specific: Only selected packages with a checkmark are candidates for forwarding.
Selecting the "All Versions" checkbox will forward all versions of that probe.

All: Will create a duplicate archive on the remote distsrv under the Nimsoft directory. This will involve more space usage than any other option.

Select Apply and Ok. distsrv will restart and the changes will be applied. Packages will start forwarding.

Depending on the no. of packages and bandwidth, this can take more than an hour.
You can continue to the next step as this process is being completed.

4. Update the remote hubs distsrv -> Setup -> Advanced settings with 'Accept remote distributions' and 'Use local archive for accepted remote distributions'

Select Apply and Ok - distsrv will restart and the changes will be applied

Additional Information

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are deploying only super packages, you must also make sure the associated probes are also downloaded to the remote archive, either through forwarding or manually logging into the hub with the remote archive and manually downloading the probes.

distsrv Release Notes

If you have distsrv on another hub and forwarding is not enabled and there are no packages in the archive, distsrv will show "Request entered on remote distsrv" and never complete.

In this case, just turn off the remote distsrv and deploy again. If the remote distsrv probe is not needed, it should be deleted to prevent someone in the future from turning it back on.