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DD3 supports offline stores or stores that have dynamic IP addresses.
Offline with Dynamic IP setup
This is a setup for a store that does not have a static IP address or is not connected live to Head Office. With this setup, the store can query HO for new jobs that HO needs to send to the store. If the store is running the Scheduler locally, it should always be able to send those jobs to HO.
At the Distribution Location at HO for the store, you need to set the OFF property to the DD Host, so the DD Host looks like this: STR01:16860:OFF.
HO setup at the store can just be a normal setup with the TCP/TCPS property.
- At the store, activate DD Offline / Pull Support in the Configuration Tool.
- Enter the HO host name as Pull Host (Source) and how often the store should check for data.
- If the Distribution Server name for the destination host does not fully match the actual host name, you can put the destination host name in the Host to Pull field. This will be used to look up jobs waiting at HO. This should match the Host name set in the Distribution Location card for the destination.
When HO has a job ready for a host that has OFF Property, it holds on to the data for that location until a pull request comes in from the store.
If a store is offline for a long time, it can fill up the Job Monitor with a lot of jobs and slow the Job Monitor down. The offline host can be changed to a manual destination, and the jobs waiting will be offloaded from the Job Queue and moved to the Outgoing folder.
Set the Offline value to Manual to specify how long DD should wait for the offline host to pull data.
Next time a pull request comes in from the offline host, DD will reload the jobs back in the job queue and they can be pulled again.
Manual transfer
This is a setup for a store that does not have network connection to HO, and all data transfer must go some other way to and from the store, such as by email or USB sticks.
At the Distribution Location at HO for the store, you need to set the MAN property to the DD Host, so the DD Host looks like this STR01:16860:MAN.
The same applies to the HO setup at the store, it needs the MAN property also.
- Activate the Offline / Pull Support in the Configuration Tool at both locations.
- Enter in the Pull Path field where the DD should look for incoming data files and how often the store should check for data.
When a job is sent to a MAN location, the data files will be copied to the Outgoing folder where Data Files for the DD are stored. Move these files out of the folder when they are transferred over to the destination host.
- At the destination host, put the files into the incoming folder specified in Pull Path. The DD will then import the files and remove them when the job has been processed.
There are two files that need to be transferred, xxxxHEAD.XML and xxxxx-RDAT.ZIP. Both these files need to be entered into the Pull Path on the destination host.
Note: The Job Monitor at Source Host will not get any report back for these jobs and will put the status to Unknown for the Manual locations. If all destinations have been processed either with Done or Unknown, the job will get status Done. The Job Monitor at Destination host shows whether the job was processed or not when the files are imported at the destination.
In the Job Monitor, you can see which Manual hosts are waiting for job pickup:
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Click the Manual button to see a list of hosts and files waiting for each host. Jobs can be reactive and processed by the source host directly, by pressing the Load TCP or Load OFF button.
When a job has been processed at the Manual location, the result is saved to a file in the Outgoing folder. This file can be picked up to import at HO to get the status into the Monitor Collection database:
- Activate the ResultDataCollector plugin in the Monitor Collection setup to pick up the Result data at HO from the incoming folder.
Cloud Storage Transfer
This setup is similar to Offline transfer where the Source host will not be able to send jobs directly to the Destination host, or in case the Destination host is not be able to request data from the Source with standard TCP request as Offline mode does but only with HTTP request.
Only Push jobs can be sent with this mode from HO to Destination. DD at HO (Source) gets the data and creates Job files that will be uploaded to Cloud File Storage (Cloud Storage Source). Destination Host runs the Offline process and sends requests to DD Web Service (DD WS) running at HO or in Azure, that will connect to DD Service (Pull Host) which will check for any job data waiting in Cloud Storage for that host (Host to Pull). If job files are waiting, DD will send back download URL links to the destination that uses this URL information to download the job files into the Manual Job Import folder (Pull Path). From there the files are imported with a Manual import process to the DD Job queue at the Destination and then processed from there. The DD service that handles downloading data can also forward jobs to other locations. An example of this is where a Store server downloads the files from Cloud and then forwards the jobs to POSs within the store.
At the Distribution Location at HO for the store, you need to set the AZURE value to the DD Distribution Host. The Distribution Host looks like this: STR01:16860:AZURE.
HO location setup at the store can just be a normal setup with the TCP/TCPS property.
To set up Cloud replication, open DD Configuration Tool.
- Only Source DD Services needs the values under the Cloud Storage Source section in the Data Config tab to upload the job files to the Cloud Storage.
- At Destination DD Service, activate Offline / Pull Support under App Config.
- Select the Cloud Pull check box.
- Set DD WS URL to the DD Web service running HO (Source).
- If the DD Web Service (IIS) is not running on same host as the DD Service at the HO, set Pull Host as the host name where the DD Service is running.
- If the Distribution Server name for the destination host does not fully match the actual host name, you can put the destination host name in the Host to Pull field. This will be used to look up jobs in Azure. This should match the Host name set in the Distribution Location card for the destination.
- Set the Pull Path that will be used to download files to, and the Manual Import Service will pick the files up to import them into the DD Queue.
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