Novell® File Reporter 1.01 extends support for storage device types to include NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices in Active Directory managed networks. Because a NAS device is an appliance and is thus incapable of hosting an NFR Agent, Novell File Reporter uses an NFR Agent running on another server to collect scan information from the NAS device. In this type of scenario, the NFR Agent is serving as a “proxy agent.”
To be scanned by a proxy agent, all NAS devices must be members of the Active Directory domain on which Novell File Reporter is installed.
NAS device support testing has been conducted exclusively on EMC* Celerra* and NetApp* filer—also known as NetApp fabric-attached storage (FAS) devices. Although Novell File Reporter might be able to scan and report on other NAS devices, no other testing had been conducted at the time of this publication.
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 consequently 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.
With the capability of reporting on storage resources through a proxy agent, some network administrators might be motivated to reduce the deployment and configuration time of Novell File Reporter by installing a minimal number of NFR Agents and then setting up those agents as proxy agents to other storage resources. If you do this, be aware of the performance consequences. Also be aware that system inventories from NAS devices can only be generated through a scan of the NAS device—not as a live inventory. We therefore recommend that proxy agents be configured only for NAS devices, or other devices for which a local agent is not available.
A proxy agent is configured through a configuration file where the DSI for Active Directory is installed.
The procedure involves specifying proxy associations in a file named nfrproxy.cfg.