PRG Mbox Designer Manual 3.8 - Manual (Page 189)

MBOX ® MEDIA SERVER USER MANUAL 181
in the server list with a letter between a-z and a light colored background. For example, is the icon for the
Master of Collection "a."
+ Member - The Member server acts as the "destination" for Content Management in a Collection; This means that
the Member will be synchronized to mirror the state of the Master in the Collection. Members are denoted in the
server list with a letter between a-z and a dark colored background. For example,
is the icon for a Member on
Collection "a."
+ Collection - A Collection of servers forms a logical group to be synchronized. This allows a number of Collections
to exist on the same network and to synchronize independent of each other. A Collection is identified by a letter;
Mbox Designer allows 26 total collections on a network (a-z), Mbox Studio allows 4 collections (a-d), and Mbox
Mini allows 1 collection (a). Each Collection must have at least one Master and one Member server in order to
allow synchronization. Only a licensed instance of Mbox allows Collections to be configured.
+ Archive - Each server may maintain a percentage of the available free storage space as an "archive" for files that
have been modified or deleted during Content Management. This option requires that Mbox is running in order to
set its value, but once set, Mbox does not need to be running to perform the archiving.
+ Monitor / Manage - Remote has two main states with respect to Content Management: Monitor, where each
instance of Remote may monitor the state of the server without actively managing content, and Manage, where
Remote can actively manage content in a Collection. Note that only one instance of Remote is allowed to manage
a Collection.
+ Managed Folders -a list of folders which can be synchronized.
+ Sync - Synchronizing a Collection will copy the content of a selected folder - or folders - on the Master server to
each Member server over the network. The synchronization utilizes a UDP Multicast network stream where the
data is sent to all servers on the same network at the same time.
Networking Hardware
Switches / UDP / Multicast / IGMP Snooping
The type of network switch used may have a great impact on the performance of Mbox Content Management.
Choosing a switch capable of switching large amounts of broadcast or multicast data is imperative to the overall
performance of the system. PRG recommends professional-grade, managed, non-blocking gigabit switches for use
with content management. However, it should be noted that an incorrectly setup managed switch may cause more
problems than it solves.
Many non-managed gigabit switches should perform well, however, there are some consumer-grade switches that
slow down the switching of the entire switch based on the connected devices (e.g., when a 100Mb device is
connected to a 1 Gb switch), which can have a negative impact on the whole switch, not just the single port.
Managed switches can employ IGMP snooping, a protocol that listens to special network management data, allowing
the switch to send multicast data only to those ports that have requested it. This allows systems with mixed protocols
(Content Management, Art-Net, etc.) on the same switch to function efficiently. For example, broadcasted Art-Net
data will be sent to all devices connected to the switch, whereas multicast content-managed data will only be sent to
other content management computers on an IGMP snooping enabled switch.
When choosing an Ethernet switch, a multicast-aware switch (such as the Pathport VIA series) will provide the best
results and transfer speeds in a number of configurations, whereas many low cost consumer switches will
underperform based on the system network topology.