Configuring Crystal Enterprise on a multihomed machine

A multihomed machine is one that has multiple network addresses. You may accomplish this with multiple network interfaces, each with one or more IP addresses, or with a single network interface that has been assigned multiple IP addresses. In either case, Crystal Enterprise responds to requests made to all available addresses by default. However, you can configure Crystal Enterprise to service only one of the available network addresses.

The number of servers that you must configure depends upon how restrictive you need to be, and whether or not the available network addresses are all resolved by the same Domain Name Service (DNS) in your network. The surest way to restrict Crystal Enterprise communication to one of the available network addresses is to configure each of the server components that is installed on the multihomed machine. For this purpose, each of the servers supports interface as a command line parameter.

Tip:    This section shows how to restrict all servers to the same network address, but it is possible to bind individual servers to different addresses. For instance, you might want to bind the File Repository Servers to a private address that is not routable from users' machines. Advanced configurations such as this require your DNS configuration to route communications effectively between all the Crystal Enterprise server components. In this example, the DNS must route communications from the other Crystal Enterprise servers to the private address of the File Repository Servers.

Restricting the APS and the WCS to a network address

The APS and the WCS require their own ports, so add the following option to both of their command lines:

-port interface:port

If the machine has multiple network interfaces, interface can be the fully qualified domain name or the IP address of the interface that you want the server to bind to. If the machine has a single network interface, interface must be the IP address that you want the server to bind to.

Note:    To retain the default port numbers, replace port with 6400 for the APS, and with 6401 for the WCS. If you change the default port numbers, you will need to make additional configuration changes. For details, see Changing the default server port numbers.

Restricting the remaining servers to the same network address

The remaining Crystal Enterprise servers select their ports dynamically by default, so you need only add the following option to their command lines:

-port interface

Replace interface with the same value that you specified for the APS and the WCS. Ensure that each server's -ns parameter points to the APS, and that the DNS resolves the value to the appropriate network address.