Communication

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Communication

DeltaMonitor will by default bind to any available IP/NIC on the server, but with multi-NIC setups, this may be undesirable. In order to force DeltaMonitor to bind to a specific NIC, first configure the NIC with the required IP address, then edit the C:\Program Files\7thSense\Delta\System\BackPack.xml to have the UDP_BindIP field as that IP address.

<UDP_BindIP>10.0.1.123</UDP_BindIP>

You can also force this and other related comms parameters by using a comms.ini file, which should be located in the same folder as DeltaMonitor.exe (\Delta\Utilities). Note that settings in comms.ini override anything in BackPack.xml.

Sample comms.ini file

[UDP Discovery]

UDP port=9999

UDP Binding IP=10.0.1.123

UDP Broadcast interval=100

[ZMQ]

Port number=5553

Connection timeout=2000

ping connected time=1000

heartbeat check time=50

poll timeout=300

BackPack will find DeltaMonitor on any available NIC.

Bind IP / Media Source IP and Separating Networks

In complex setups, a faster network is used for the media transfer and a slower control network is used for communication between BackPack and DeltaMonitor. This requires multiple NICs in each server and the network setup so BackPack can see the control network.

Server Role

Own Bind IP (DeltaMonitor)

Slow 1GB network

Media Source IP

Fast 10G network

Source (using a Proxy)

192.168.55.100

192.168.99.10 (separate NAS)

Target

192.168.55.101

192.168.99.101 (self)

Target

192.168.55.102

192.168.99.102 (self)

In this example, all servers have 2 x NICs, and each Target server views and copies files over the 10G (192.168.99.x) network, but it communicates to BackPack over the 1G (192.168.55.x) network, keeping control and media separate. The Source is setup as a source proxy, viewing a NAS on 10G at 192.168.99.10.

General Notes

Throttles should be set so that the network is not saturated with traffic – if it is saturated, there is a possibility that BackPack will temporarily lose connection to servers (in progress jobs are unaffected). Using separate networks as above can help with this.

The Source server (or NAS via a proxy server) needs to allow many simultaneous network connections, since asking 30 servers to copy media will result in at least 30 parallel connections to the Source IP. Note that Windows 7 and 10 Professional are limited to 20 parallel SMB connections, Windows Server is unlimited.

Page edited [d/m/y]: 16/12/2020