Relay-Relay persistent connection

Overview

The following picture displays the persistent TCP connection established between child relay and parent relay.



Enabling persistent connections on the parent relay

  1. Log in as a master operator to the BigFix Console.
  2. Locate and right-click the parent relay computer. Select Edit Computer Settings...
  3. Add the following setting to the computer: 
    _BESRelay_PersistentConnection_Enabled = 1
  4. Restart the relay process for the setting to become effective.
Note: When adding this setting to a relay computer having a Version prior to Version 11, the behavior of its child clients remains unchanged.
Note: This setting is effective on the BigFix server computer.

Enabling persistent connections on the child relay

  1. Log in as a master operator to the BigFix Console.
  2. Locate and right-click the client computer. Select Edit Computer Settings...
  3. Add the following setting to the computer:
    _BESRelay_PersistentConnection_OpenParent = 1
  4. 4. Restart the relay process for the setting to become effective.

Establishing a persistent connection

The general flow for a Relay establishing a persistent connection with the parent Relay is the same as the Client-Relay one. The main difference is in the technical details for opening the connection and sending down the notification data.

The Relay when registering with the parent Relay, that is when the local Client registers, will be instrumented through a setting to ask for a permanent connection with the parent (_BESRelay_PersistentConnection_OpenParent). In this case, it will ask the parent Relay for a persistent connection. The parent Relay will perform the check on its settings: checking if the persistent connection setting is set and sends back a positive/negative response. In case of a positive response the Relays (both parent and child) will store the connected connection and set it as a keep alive connection.

Every time the parent Relay needs to send a notification to the child Relay, it will use the persistent connection.

A Relay will be persistent connected or not, there is no logic for handling relays in the same subnet, if such a need arise the suggestion is to use one relay of the isolated subnet as parent relay and set it to be persistent connected with its parent.

Managing persistent connections

You can manage persistent connections by configuring a few settings. For details, see Persistent TCP connections.