The ability of Novell® File Reporter 1.01 to support proxy agents also means that it can support clustered servers. This support includes both Windows server clusters in an Active Directory managed network and Novell server clusters in an eDirectory™ managed network that includes Novell Storage Manager. If you do not have Novell Storage Manager as part of your eDirectory managed network, you cannot use Novell File Reporter to report on clusters.
Novell File Reporter uses an NFR Agent running on another server to collect scan information from the server cluster resource (virtual server). In this type of scenario, the NFR Agent is serving as a “proxy agent” for the virtual server.
IMPORTANT:The proxy agent, unlike a hosted NFR Agent, takes a remote scan of the file system of the storage resource. Depending on your network topology, this can result in Novell File Reporter taking significantly longer to complete a scan than when a storage resource is scanned by an NFR agent running locally on that storage resource
Be aware that system inventories from virtual servers can only be generated through a scan of the virtual server—not as a live inventory.
Proxy agents are configured through a configuration file named nfrproxy.cfg. The location of this file varies, depending on whether your network is managed by eDirectory or Active Directory, and whether you have Novell Storage Manager deployed or not.
NOTE:The nfrproxy.cfg file is also used to set up proxy agents for NAS devices in Active Directory managed networks (see Section 8.0, Configuring Proxy Agents for NAS Devices).