Relays autoselection - how clients get relays.dat for the first time?

Usage and Config Platform
1

(imported topic written by PiotrBoetzel)

Hello folks,

I am wondering about such a setup:

Let’s say I have a remote location with 500 clients and I have a relay in there. Actually I have 10 locations like this. And my clients travel between locations - laptop computers. To cope with this I would like to have relay autoselection. But how will my clients get relays.dat for the first time?

I see two options:

  1. I start with manual selection. I create 10 different installation packages for every location (pointing to the appropriate relay) and I use them in respective locations to install clients. When all clients are installed I switch to autoselection.

  2. I allow clients from remote offices to connect to the central TEM server- by setting the appropriate firewall rules/NAT etc. I have relay autoselection turned on. I use same installation package for every client - pointing to the TEM server. So all my clients connect to TEM server at first. Then I turn on autoselection and they choose their closest relay.

The second option is simpler but puts much more load on TEM server and the network. Am I correct?

Thanks for help

Piotr

2

(imported comment written by PiotrBoetzel)

Hi guys,

nobody knows how it should work?

The documentation says that relays.dat is needed in case of autoselection:

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/wikis/home?lang=en#!/wiki/Tivoli%20Endpoint%20Manager/page/Autoselection%20Failsafe%20Controls

But how the client gets it - if it was installed with client deployment tool for example?

3

(imported comment written by martinc)

Hi Piotr,

I have used the second method you listed for the most part and I believe that is what is recommended. I have also used the first method for instances where a direct connection from a DMZ computer to the TEM server is not allowed (has to pass through a couple firewalls first.)

The relays.dat file is downloaded as soon as it connects/registers with the TEM server even if the system is set to manual relay selection (at least it is doing it in my tests). This is also true when using the client deployment tool.

When you say that there is more load on the TEM server, do you mean during the registration? If so, there is no real hit there. I have an action running that reconfigures the clients to use auto relay selection, so that it will register with the TEM server, get the action, get set to auto and run the relay selection.

I think the other part you need to to use the “Location Property wizard” to map a site (subnet) to a location. You can then use relay affiliation to map the site to a relay. If this is constantly running (reapply) on the clients, when the move from site to site, the location will get remapped and they will check for the correct relay to affiliate to.

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/wikis/home?lang=en#!/wiki/Tivoli%20Endpoint%20Manager/page/Relay%20Affiliation

Hope that helps a bit :slight_smile:

4

(imported comment written by GreenEagleLeader)

The relays.dat is distributed with the actionsite (which all clients are subscribed to and gather by default)

Location on the client: C:\Program Files (x86)\BigFix Enterprise\BES Client__BESData\actionsite\relays.dat

You can look inside this file by first running it through the parser (
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/wikis/home?lang=en#!/wiki/Tivoli%20Endpoint%20Manager/page/Relays.dat%20Parser
)