Administering the Backup Server › Discovery Configuration › How the Discovery Service Works

How the Discovery Service Works

A Discovery server is implemented as a Windows service. As soon as a Discovery server starts, it enumerates the list of products to create a behavior mask. Based on this mask, the Discovery server initializes the following required components:

• The Listen/Serialize component is initialized first and starts listening on a particular port (or Mailslot) for incoming packets (messages) from other Discovery servers. When a message is received, the Discovery server writes data (if any) into the repository (registry, for example) and then notifies the Query/Advertise component.
• The Query/Advertise component sends the message received from the Listen/Serialize component, (prepared with the product's list) directly to the Discovery server, which requested the data. The Query/Advertise component can also send messages as a broadcast message to the selected network targets (the list of IP Subnets or Windows Domains) if it is scheduled or initiated manually. It does this in order to query other Discovery servers across the network, and advertise its own list of Arcserve Backup products.