How to create a replication share to save bandwidth on KACE SMA file transfer tasks (4304748)

Before creating a Replication Share, one device at each remote location must be selected to act as a Replication Device. The appliance will copy every replication item to the Replication Device at the specified Destination Path. The replication process automatically restarts if it is stopped due to a network failure or replication schedule. If stopped, the replication process restarts at the point it was stopped.

Before creating a new Replication Share some conditions must be fulfilled:

• Create a network shared folder with read/write access to an account (used to write files to be replicated by KACE SMA) and read only access to another account (used by remote computers to have access to that folder to read files)
• Computer that will be used as replication share must be available on KACE SMA inventory, this means an agent must be installed on that computer.
• A Label must exist, assigned to all computers on remote site.

In this example, the name of local folder to be shared will be "C:\KaceReplication" located on a computer running on "Windows Server 2012" operating system, shared folder name will be "\\W2012K1000J\KaceReplication" and label name will be "ML - Replication Folder"

Replication share, will be the user assigned to KACE SMA to upload the files to replication share, Replication User will be the user assigned to remote computers to download files.

Now, creating a new label for remote computers can be done by going to Home | Label Management | Labels | Choose Action | New Manual Label and completing the information required

After that, the labels must be assign to every remote computer's inventory entry (smart labels can be used, but must be populated before those computers start using the replication share. To populate the smart label without forcing inventory this article may be helpful)

Sneaker net share: A folder can be created and the contents of an existing replication folder can be copied to it. Then specifying this folder as the new replication folder in the appliance. The appliance determines whether the new folder has all the replication items present and replicates only the new ones, which conserves bandwidth. You can manually copy the contents of replication folder to a new folder. The replication folder created in a device follows following hierarchy:

\\repl2\replicationitems folder

In this example it is:

\\W2012K1000J\KaceReplication\repl2\replicationitems

The device name and folder name is user defined while repl2 is automatically created by the appliance. The replication items folder includes the folder for patches, kbots, upgrade files, and applications.
All the replication items are first listed in the replication queue and then copied one at a time to the destination path. Any new replication item is first listed in the replication queue and then copied after an interval of 10 minutes.
Replication items are copied in this order:

1. Script dependencies
2. Applications
3. Agent upgrades
4. Patches

Now to create the new Replication Share, these steps must be followed.

1. On the KACE SMA's administrator console, navigate to Distribution | Replication | Choose Action | New
2. Click Device drop down list, and select the network device that will act as replication share
3. Select operating systems you want to be shared on the replication device.
4. If Patch files are to be include, then Include Application Patches box must be checked
5. If Dell Updates files are to be include, then Include Dell Updates box must be checked
   
6. To set Destination Share configuration:
   1. Select Path where files will be located, in this example if using local share this is C:\KaceReplication or UNC(Universal Naming Convention) \\W2012K1000J\KaceReplication
   2. Select Local Share or UNC (requires credentials) radio button accordingly to your previous selection
   3. If using UNC a credential must be provided, in this example, this is the Replication Share user created on the Active Directory with read and write permission on the network share
   4. Select label used to identify this Replication Share from Label: drop down list, only one label per site must be created, if multiple replication shares will be created then one unique label per replication share must be created.

   

7. To set the Download Share configuration:
   1. Network path must be set at Path: text box
   2. Credential for that path must be created and selected, this credentials can be read only, in this example, the credentials used are named ReplicationUser
      

      

8. To set the Schedule configuration:
   1. Select the High Bandwidth: rate to be used when network is idle to use more bandwidth to synchronize the replication share
   2. Select the Low Bandwidth: rate to be used when network has low use but some bandwidth can be used to synchronize the replication share
   3. Now, on every box of schedule matrix select the bandwidth you want to use at every moment accordingly to bandwidth usage.
9. Click on blue Save button to save changes.

Replication share should be ready now to synchronize files from KACE SMA.