Appliance requirements for appliance-initiated discovery

Appliance options you need to configure for this method

The following options on the DataFabric Discovery - All Settings page (Setup tab > DataFabric Discovery) must be configured for this method:

Enable DFM Discovery
DFM Service

The preceding settings are correctly configured for the default DataFabric Manager host name datafabricmanager. You do not need to change these settings unless you have previously disabled DataFabric Manager discovery or want to specify a different host name or IP address and port for the DataFabric Manager management station.

Additionally, you must enable SNMP (Setup tab > SNMP > General) to configure the appliance to send monitoring information to DataFabric Manager.

Note
The following CLI options apply to this feature: config.admin.dfm.enable and config.admin.dfm.service. See the CLI help for more information about these options.

Related DataFabric Manager options

The Appliance Initiated Discovery Enabled option in DataFabric Manager (Main window > Options link) must be enabled to support this feature. The Appliance Initiated Discovery Enabled option is disabled by default.

Restrictions

The following restrictions apply to appliance-initiated discovery:

Appliance-initiated discovery can occur only when a NetCache appliance joins a network after DataFabric Manager has been started.
Appliance-initiated discovery is available only on NetCache appliances that are running NetCache 5.4 and later. (NetCache versions prior to NetCache 5.4 cannot use DNS to obtain DataFabric Manager's IP address and port.)

Sequence of events in appliance- initiated discovery

When a NetCache appliance boots, it opens a connection to the DataFabric Manager management station identified in the NetCache configuration settings (Setup tab > DataFabric Discovery). The appliance then sends an initial HTTP GET discovery message to the management station and waits for a response. If the appliance cannot contact the management station, it waits an hour and tries again, repeating this cycle until the management station is contacted. Before each connection attempt, the appliance checks DNS to identify the IP address and port of the DataFabric Manager management station.

Note
NetCache 5.4 and later versions have support for DNS lookups for DataFabric Manager. DNS lookups are performed only when the DFM Service option (Setup tab > DataFabric Discovery) is set to a host name instead of an IP address and port.