Does Flexera Agent works with Load balancer

[chirag_sharma2]

Please suggest a way to allow agent communication with load balancer.

[ChrisG]

If I understand the question right, I think you looking to put 2 or more beacons behind a load balancer.

That would probably be technically possible to do if you configure agents with the load balancer details as if it was a beacon. This could be done with registry entries under the HKLM\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\ManageSoft Corp\ManageSoft\Common\DownloadSettings and UploadSettings keys. (For some discussion about how this might be done, see this thread).

However it isn't clear to me why you would want to do this. Agents have robust built-in capability to communicate with multiple beacons directly, and failover to alternate beacons if one fails. I would suggest the best practice is to keep things simple and configure multiple beacons as normal and let agents communicate with them directly rather than try to introduce a load balancer.

[chirag_sharma2]

Hi Chris, 

We are trying to Avoid Direct Communication to the beacons for security purpose and Balance the network load over beacons. As of now, 1 Beacon is getting 70% of traffic and second beacon isn't geetting much Network traffic. 

I am still not sure and not clear how to place Load Balancer in place because it might affect the coummincation - 

What should be the DEPLOYSERVERURL ? 

FlexLoadBalancer.compnay.com ?

Or FlexLoadBalancer.company.com/ManagesoftDL?

[ChrisG]

The value of the DEPLOYSERVERURL setting in mgssetup.ini is a complete URL that is used for bootstrapping, and subsequently for ultimate failover if the agent is unable to connect with a beacon using details in the failover settings that the agent (typically) downloads through its policy.

For example, the DEPLOYSERVERURL value should look like the following: http://FlexLoadBalancer.company.com/ManagesoftDL

[chirag_sharma2]

Hi @ChrisG, 

Yes, but  Load Balancer would not support that URL so I am confused. 

[ChrisG]

A normal load balancer would simply forward requests to any URL it receives to a target server selected according to whatever algorithm the load balancer is configured to use. Sometimes load balancers might be configured to perform some URL rewriting, but in this situation you wouldn't even need to configure that.

What is stopping you from configuring the load balancer you're working with simply and transparently forward requests?

[chirag_sharma2]

Hi @ChrisG 

I am checking with my team to see if load balancer can forward to beacon URL with ManagesoftDL and also ManagesoftRL

Next concern, Currently running agents would try to connect with our beacons directly without knowing about load balancer so what should I do without redeploying agents in the environment?

[ChrisG]

The most direct way to get the agents connecting to the load balancer would be to arrange to create registry entries with appropriate details under the HKLM\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\ManageSoft Corp\ManageSoft\Common\DownloadSettings and UploadSettings keys. Look at existing setting under there for inspiration on what settings are needed.

Note that the agents will also likely attempt to make direct connections to the beacons - that would be difficult to avoid as various behaviors in the FlexNet system will work hard to try to make that happen. You would need to ensure network rules are in place to block traffic from the computers that agents are running on so that agents are forced to go to the load balancer.