User guide

PCoIP Technology User Guide
12
4 Discovery Mechanisms
Before a PCoIP Session can begin, a Host and
Portal must be paired (associated with each
other).
The first step is to determine the network
location of each Host and Portal endpoint. This
can be done manually, but in larger PCoIP
Technology deployments, it’s often more
convenient to discover the endpoints
automatically.
In order for the management tool (PCoIP
Management Console, connection broker, etc.)
to discover the endpoints, the endpoints may
use a combination of:
• DNS-SRV Resource Records discovery (DNS-
SRV RR)
• SLP discovery
The discovery mechanisms available with PCoIP
Technology may be used with each other or
separately.
SLP discovery may be used by the Host and
Portal without a management tool. See Service
Location Protocol below for more detail.
DNS-SRV is recommended for discovering Host
and Portal endpoints. For more details, see the
next section, Discovery using DNS-SRV
Resource Records.
Note: A good understanding of networking is
required before implementing discovery
mechanisms.
Configuring Discovery
Use the Web Interface’s Discovery webpage to
enable discovery mechanisms.
Figure 4-1: Discovery Webpage
The Discovery webpage has four settings:
Enable SLP Discovery – see Discovery Using
Service Location Protocol below
Enable Host Discovery – allows Portal to
discover available hosts when establishing a
PCoIP session
Enable DNS SRV Discovery – see Discovery
Using DNS-SRV Resource Records, below
DNS SRV Discover Delay – amount of delay
time in seconds between DNS SRV Discovery
attempts. DNS SRV Discovery continues
periodically until the device is successful in
contacting a Connection Management Server
Discovery Using DNS-SRV
Resource Records
Host and Portal endpoints can be configured to
use discovery mechanisms that use DNS-SRV
Resource Records (see RFC 2782). For details,
see the PCoIP Management Console [2] or
connection broker’s documentation.
Like other discovery mechanisms, DNS-SRV
discovery allows the management tool to
discover the endpoint without prior configuration
of the endpoint’s Connection Manager IP
Address or DNS Name parameter. (In other
words, DNS-SRV discovery operates
independently of the Connection Manager IP
Address or DNS Name value.) If the value in the
endpoint becomes stale, DNS-SRV discovery
continues to work and the new CMS can
discover the endpoint.
Benefits
DNS-SRV discovery has the ability to have
redundant backup of CMS hosts. DNS-SRV
Resource Records can have multiple CMS
servers with different priorities and weights, so