Pre- Cache in off working hrs

Usage and Config Platform
1

shall we pre-cache for inifite expire date with difine off working Hrs.

thanks

2

Unfortunately you can’t really set constraints on the pre-cache of content on the client.

The only way to pre-cache content on the client is through the, “Pre-cache content before action constraints are satisfied”. That itself means you are bypassing the timing constraints and there is no second set of constraints for the pre-caching itself.

You have a couple options from here:

  1. This thread ( https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/forums/html/topic?id=77777777-0000-0000-0000-000014758139 ) covers some examples on how to enable bandwidth throttling during business hours but disable it outside of business hours.
  2. You could using the caching wizard to pre-cache the content onto relays during a specific time. This wont put it on the client but at least itll get close
  3. Disable pre-caching so that the downloads only occur during the period of time that action constraints are satisfied
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3

There may be a way to achieve this using server automation - someone from that team may be able say more on this.

4

We do have the ability to do pre-fetching of downloads in Server Automation as part of a scheduled automation plan’s execution, but we do not currently have the ability to schedule when that pre-fetching happens. However, this issue is something that has come up with customers, so don’t be surprised if finds it’s way into the product (sooner rather than later hopefully!)

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5

After one year, does it exists?

6

Nothing specific in the product, but there are groups within the organization where I work that are doing this with two tasks. The first task downloads the files and copies them to a folder outside the client folder. The second Task becomes relevant when the files are downloaded and the software is not installed yet.

They are currently using this method for Office 2016 deployments to remote sites.

7

Hi @fermt - apologies for the very late reply!

Yes, the ability to schedule pre-fetching now does exist in Server Automation - see the documentation, specifically the section titled “Scheduling an Automation Plan, setting a stop time, and prefetching downloads”. See an example screenshot (bottom-most part):

1 Like
8

Awesome!
That’s a great help.
Is there any plan to add a feature that allows define just specific ranges of downloads?
e.g. some customers allow big downloads on off hours only. So it would be great we have the ability to select a window downloads, for example from 1:00 am to 6:00 am and if a download doesn’t finish it would be paused and resumed until next day at the same window.

9

Apologies once again @fermt - for some reason I’m not getting notification of updates to this post!

At the current time, there are no plans to implement the behavior you’ve described there I’m afraid.

You could try adding a new Request for Enhancement (RFE):
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rfe/execute?use_case=changeRequestLanding

1 Like
10

You might be able to emulate it somewhat with Automatic Groups.

You could create an Automatic Group with no members. Take an Action targetting the Automatic Group with “Action Start Time” set in the future, and “Begin downloads before constraints are satisfied”.

Modify the Group’s relevance to add clients to the group when you want the downloads to begin. Once the client is added to the group, they’ll become Relevant for the action and begin downloads. When the Action Start Time arrives the clients will begin executing.

If you modify the Group’s Relevance to kick computers out of the group before the action start time arrives, they’ll stop being relevant for the action - but if their client cache folders are large enough, I think the downloads should remain cached. So you could add them back into the group later (the next night) to let them resume downloading.

I haven’t tried it myself, so take that with a lot of salt, but it might approach what you’re trying to do.

11

I know it’s 2.5 years later but is there a method to guarantee that precaching only occurs at specific times? We are in the process of replicating a 7GB image to remote locations. Unfortunately this has impacted our end user experience due to the slow connection speeds to our remote sites. Another thing we have noticed is that when you run the pre-cache action and stop it the relay continues to download it even though the action is stopped. I’m not sure if this is by design or if it’s a bug.

12

I don’t think there are any controls over download schedules…I think it could cause some confusion if we were to have separate download and action schedules, as actions could get stuck ‘waiting for downloads’ if the schedule wasn’t met.

For site bandwisth issues, I’d recommend either network QoS rules or bandwidth throttling at the Relays to ensure they do not exceed your capacity. I’ve done this at many sites and it’s nice to “set and forget” and not worry about when the operators send their precache actions.

13

It would be nice if it was integrated into the action execution so that you could schedule the action for 10pm a few days from now but only allow downloads between 12am and 6am.