Return
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Title
How to Minimize Netvault Generated Network Traffic by Turning off Broadcasting -
Description
How to Minimize Netvault Generated Network Traffic by Turning off Broadcasting
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Cause
NetVault builds the machines.dat file by picking up UDP broadcast messages from other NetVault machines. These broadcasts contain relevant information about the NetVault machine, such as preferred address, and will occur always on startup, and then at regularly occurring intervals. These broadcasts can have undesirable impacts on your network. -
Resolution
You can minimize network traffic generated by Netvault by turning off its auto-discovery feature:
- Shutdown NetVault on ALL NetVault machines (so they are all stopped at the same time) Even clients that are not added need to be shut down.
- Edit the $NETVAULT_HOME\etc\machines.dat file on all machines, removing all characters. Don't delete the file, but make it an empty file. A missing machines.dat file will force a broadcast on startup, regardless of the configurator setting in step 3.
- In the Netvault Configurator-> Network Manager tab -> Connections sub-tab uncheck broadcast details and apply settings on all machines.
- Enter the Network address(es) of your networks in the "Comma separated list of NetWorks and addresses not to resolve"
- Restart netvault on all machines
- Do a check access in client management, you may have to re-find some machines.
- Check machines.dat of client machines -- it should only have an entry for the netvault server
Note - Impact:
- Be careful if there is a smart client involved. Machines that backup to the smart client will need an entry in machines.dat for the smart client which will no longer be broadcast if this procedure is followed. The smart client's entry can be copied from the Netvault server and added to the machines.dat of the clients manually if required.
- New Netvault machine will not be automatically discovered and you will have to "find" them.
- This procedure is not recommended if you are backing up dhcp machines because if they change IP Netvault will have no way of detecting it and that job will fail.