Symantec Management Platform (Notification Server)

I have a notification server in Europe, 1 package server in USA, and 1 package server in South America. Europe is in 1 site and USA and SA are in a seperate site. My USA package server is continuously retrying downloads on 6 packages. I see in log viewer the "download package sources from:" is linked to the NS server in Europe it they should be. "Download Snapshot" is linked to the package server in SA and failing. I want "Download snapshot" to link to the NS in Europe also but I can't figure out why this is not working or where the link can be changed.

Hello jlittleton,
Do you have sites configured? The snapshots allow the package servers to pull from each other unless you explicitly deny this.

Let us know,

Jim

Yes, sites are configured. One thing I noticed is if I disconnect the package server from the network the download fails because it is still trying to access the link to the package server which is now offline. Shouldn't it try to download from the NS if the package server is not reachable?

Thanks,
James

James,
If you have a site configured with more than 1 package server, the Notification Server is configured so that the package servers will always try to download from each other, if their package states are 'Ready' on the NS, before going to the NS. If I was you, I would separate the US and South America into 2 different sites or set one of your package servers as constrained and the other as unconstrained. Even if you set the option in coresettings.config to force package servers to always download from the NS, the PS's within a single site will always try to download from each other.

Also, simply unplugging one of the package servers won't necessarily cause an immediate failover to the NS. The package server will still have a Ready state for its packages on the NS. You would have to get the package states to a not ready state or remove the package server in the NS.

This is one of the areas I'm hoping for some big improvements in NS 7 because it can get really funky if there are more than 1 PS in a site.

There is also a setting in the coresettings.config (easily viewed with the NSConfigurator, where you can set this failover up). By default, as Pat indicates, it will never fail over to the NS.

Both servers in the US site are already set for unconstrained.

In your original post you said you have 1 PS in USA and 1 PS in SA, with USA and SA in a separate site from Europe, which I took to mean you have a single site defined which contains the subnets for SA and USA. So, if you have a USA site, with 2 package servers, you will want to set 1 to contrained and the other to unconstrained. If I was doing the setup, I think I'd probably look at defining the sites separately within the USA as well so the package servers aren't in the same site, but that's up to you. Regardless, even though you have both Ps's set to unconstrained, just by having them be in the same site they will want to download from each other if one of them has the packages in a Ready state on the NS.

Let me clarify my original post just a bit. Yes, I have the NS in Europe site. I have 1 package server in USA, another package server in SA. Both USA and SA are located in site US on different subnets and both are unconstrained. Ideally I would like for both servers to look to the NS in Europe for all packages with no replication between server SA and server USA. Let's say I configure SA unconstrained and USA constrained then SA will try to pull from USA? Maybe my thinking is flawed. I must admint it can be a little overwhelming at first.

"Both USA and SA are located in site US on different subnets"

I think that is the most important point. Create different "sites" one for the US and for SA. You can do this manually or import sites from Active Directory.

If you set SA as unconstrained then it will have the ability to pull from the NS in Europe, but the US server can only pull from the SA server. I'd seriously think about defining the SA as a separate site from the US. It'll be the only good way to guarantee both PS's download only from the NS

Sorry, Jim - we responded at the same time. Do what Jim says

I understand what you are saying about separate sites. Here is my problem, however - Sites are imported from Active Directory. Since there is no domain controller in SA the PS is located in the USA site which hosts the dc for USA and SA. A site has been manually created in Altiris for SA server. The SA server is also located in site USA. Do I need to remove the SA server from site USA?

You can create sites manually. This is what I would do for the SA site.

Created SA site, put SA PS in it and Removed SA PS from USA site. Everything is updating as it should now. Thanks very much to all who helped to solve this problem.