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Best Practices for Setting Up a Replica Image Store   « Go Back

Summary

This article describes how to install a Replica Image Store and connect it to a Moka5 Management Server.

Pre-Requisites

  • Moka5 Management Server
  • Primary Image Store configured with at least one image (the Image Store can be an all-in-one installation, or a standalone installation)
  • Windows 2008 R2 (or newer) server with enough space to accommodate a new Image Store.

Note: When the Management Server determines that Player, Creator, or a browser needs to download LivePCs, LivePC updates, or client installers, it passes a URL that includes the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the appropriate Image Store. This FQDN must be resolvable by the Player or Creator for the download to begin; in split DNS scenarios, the Primary Image Store and all Replica Image Stores must be available through a Desktop Application Gateway. This makes it possible for Players and Creators to receive updates when not on the corporate network.

Table of Contents

Background

Moka5 offers the ability to place more than one Image Store anywhere in your network. For larger deployments, multiple Image Stores can keep any individual Image Store from being overloaded. Other Image Stores in your deployment are referred to as Replica Image Stores.

The Moka5 Creator must always upload published images to the Primary Image Store as configured in your Moka5 Management Server. Once an image or image update is uploaded to the Primary Image Store, there are two ways in which you can distribute it to your Replica Image Stores.
  1. Push. These updates are pre-staged, but must be executed manually by the administrator. A replica push also does not clean up after itself or maintain its integrity as well as a replica pull.
  2. Pull. This method is more reliable and results in a cleaner Image Store file set, but can have small delays during application. Files are only pulled down to the Replica Image Store and cached the first time a user’s Player asks for them. End users may experience small delays while the Replica Image Store requests and prepares the files for distribution.

Description

This article describes how to install a Replica Image Store and connect it to a Moka5 Management Server.

Note: For more information on installing a Moka5 Management Server, read our product documentation on the subject.

This “all-in-one” installation type is recommended for smaller Moka5 deployments running Moka5 pre-4.0. Most users, however, will perform a “standalone” Image Store installation using the server installer.

First they will install a Management Server, and then an Image Store, using the Moka5 server installer each time. The Moka5 4.1 server installer gives the option to register an Image Store with the Management Server during installation, so you can connect the Image Store and Management Server even if you do a standalone installation.

Note: For help moving from an all-in-one Management Server with an integrated Primary Image Store, to a standalone Primary Image Store, please follow the procedure in this document: Move All-In-One Primary Image Store Server to Standalone Primary Image Server.

Install the Replica Image Store:

  1. Log in as an Administrator to the server on which we are installing the Replica Image Store (RIS).
  2. Install 64-bit Java.
  3. Copy the Moka5 Enterprise Server Installer file (moka5-m5es-installer-#.#.#.exe) to the computer and run it. The Server Installer file is in the Moka5 Installation Package folder you downloaded during the initial Management Server installation.
  4. On the “Installation Components” screen, uncheck all the boxes except for the “Image Store” checkbox. Click Next.
  5. Proceed with the rest of the installation as outlined in the product documentation.
  6. If the installation was successful and the Image Store was automatically registered with the Management Server, then the Image Store is ready to use. If the Image Store failed to register with the Management Server, proceed to “Manually Registering a Replica Image Store.”

Target the Replica Image Store to be used by Player:

  1. Log in to the Management Console.
  2. Navigate to Policies > Player Policies and click into the Custom tab.
  3. Choose a group to target the Replica Image Store to.
  4. In the "General" section, click on the Image store to use box.
  5. Select the address of the new replica.
  6. Click Save to apply the changes.

If you are using Desktop Gateways, you will have to add this replica to their configuration.

  1. On each Desktop Gateway, log in to the Server Configurator.
  2. Add the DNS name of the Replica Image Store to the “Proxy Hosts” list.
  3. Test whether the Replica Image Store is configured correctly by targeting the new replica to an existing groups.
  4. Log in to the server’s Management Console as a user belonging to that group and download the Moka5 Player installer. If you have configured the replica correctly, there will be a small delay whilst the installer file is replicated from the Primary Image Store to the replica before the download starts.
  5. Once the download completes, verify that the URL where the file was downloaded from refers to the replica instead of pointing to the Primary Image Store.
  6. You can also verify whether the installer was pulled to the new replica.
  7. Open Windows Explorer on the file system of the replica and go to:
C:\Program Files\Moka5\Server\m5fs\installers
(this path might have been customized at installation time)
There you should find a folder named after the version of installer you just downloaded (i.e 4.1.0.12345). In that folder there will be a collection of files that make up the installer package that you just downloaded.

Manually Registering a Replica Image Store

If you did not register the Image Store, or if there was a problem registering the Replica Image Store with the Management Server, follow the next procedure to manually register the Replica Image Store.

Note: If you installed a mirrored Primary Image Store (an Image Store running behind the same load balancer as your Primary Image Store), do not register it with the Management Server.
  1. The service takes a minute or so during initial start. After that period, navigate to the Replica image Store’s server configurator, or “iconfig” interface (https://<ris_dns_name>/iconfig).
  2. Log in with your bootstrap admin credentials.
  3. Go to Settings > Access Keys.
  4. Click the pencil icon at the end of the key and choose “Delete.”
  5. Click Add Access Key.
  6. In another browser window, log on to your Management Server’s iconfig interface.
  7. Go to Settings > Access Keys.
  8. Copy the "Key ID" and "Key Secret" to the empty "Add Access Key" fields on the Replica Image Store’s iconfig interface.
  9. In the Replica Image Store iconfig, navigate to Settings > Advanced.
  10. Click on the “Enable" button next to "Replica is Off" to enable the replica.
  11. Click "Add server" in the Primary Image Store section.
  12. Type or paste in your Primary Image Store’s DNS name (if you have not configured a standalone Primary Image Store, this could be your Management Server’s DNS name)
  13. In the dropdown box, choose the Key ID from step 8.
  14. Click Test to confirm that you entered the key correctly.
  15. If the tests succeed, click the “Enable” button. If the tests fail, you may need to append “/xmfs" at the end of the server URL. For example:
    If your Primary Image Store Server is part of an all-in-one installation, the URL will be

    https://<server_dns_name>/xmfs

    or
    If your Primary Image Store is a standalone Server, the URL could be

    https://<pis_server_dns_name>
    or
    https://<pis_server_dns_name>/xmfs
  16. To register the Replica Image Store with the Management Server, log in to the Management Console with your bootstrap admin credentials.
  17. Navigate to Settings > Infrastructure and click into the Images Stores tab.
  18. Click Add.
  19. Enter the correct server URL for the Replica Image Store and the Key ID and Key Secret.
  20. Click Test to send a request from the Management Server to the Replica Image Store.
  21. If the test succeeds, click Save to apply the changes.