Peer Nest Functionality

1

Hi,

Kindly ask about PeerNest and how it works, as I understand I should enable PeerNest on all clients, and then it will automatically elect master and priority, and this master will be acting like relay, but I found that all clients still have the same priority, and still all clients downlad from relay. So is the election done automatically, or do I have to do it manually? please advise.

BR,
Mohamed

2

The documentation at Working with PeerNest should be helpful.

Pay particular attention to the ports required - if the clients are blocking the inbound connections through a host-based firewall, none of the peers will find each other and each will do their own relay downloads.

Also PeerNest only works within a broadcast domain, if there are router hops between the clients they will not act as peers. Similar if each is on a VPN connection, or on a Wireless network with AP Isolation.

3

Thanks Jason,

Both PC’s in the same subnet and no blocking or firewall between them; as mentioned, I already enabled peernest on both with the above settings and let it automatically elect master, then threw a win patch on one of them from the BF server and waited until finished, and then again threw the same patch on the second server. Then I monitored client logs and found it took it from the BF server, not from the first PC, so what do you think?
_BESClient_PeerNest_Enabled =“1"
_BESClient_PeerNest_IsPassive = “0”
_BESClient_PeerNest_ResponseTimeoutSeconds =“300"
_BESClient_Comm_IPCommunicationsMode = “OnlyIpv4”

BR,
Mohamed

4

Patches might be big files, so take into consideration peer nest cache size as well.
You can enable peer nest logs to have a better insight of what’s happening; look at this article to get an idea on how to read them: PeerNest: behind the scenes - BigFix Platform PeerNest feature Blog

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5

Thanks Daniele,

I already tested a small patch for a chrome size of 120 MB , I will enable log for both clients and see what will happen.

Just a question I saw both clients had priority 100 which is the default value so which one of them will be the master if both had the same priority?

BR,
Mohamed

6

Per the documentation link Jason referenced above (Working with PeerNest):

“…if all peers have the same priority, the computer with the lowest ID will download the file from the Relay”

(this same note is included in the blog post referenced above as well in the ‘Election’ section :slight_smile: )

But this is somewhat dependent on the version of the Platform and Clients that you’re leveraging. What are the Relay/Client versions in question here?

7

Hi Aram,

Thanks for your support and cooperation

Actually the Bigfix server and client I had ver.10.0.10 and I am not using relay.

BR,
Mohamed

8

Hi Daniele,

Thanks for your support and cooperation.
This PeerNest: behind the scenes - BigFix Platform PeerNest feature Blog was very useful and covered everything. Again, thanks for your support.

BR,
Mohamed

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