Duet 1.5 SP1 introduced a very useful feature that increases the supportability of the product. Since it has not always been installed by default, you might not know it exists… So today I want to talk about it and the great advantages it has to offer you, the Duet administrator.
The Duet Client Central Diagnostics (CCD) helps you to see the status of all the Duet clients in your landscape in one centralized place, allowing you to act proactively and troubleshoot remotely Duet client’s issues.
What it actually does, is to run a set of tests on all Duet clients (using a configurable interval), collect, and then display the results on the designated UI.
This solution is composed of two main components:
- Client side – responsible for executing tests and sending the results back to the server
- Server side – responsible for collecting and displaying the tests results
In order to enable the CCD on a Duet landscape, the CCD client component needs be installed on your Duet clients. As mentioned above, if you have a Duet version earlier than SP3, installing the CCD is a separate procedure from installing the Duet client.
In addition, you will need to configure the CCD server side by entering some basic information and creating shared folders for collecting the tests results. This should not take you more than 5 minutes…
Once the CCD is installed and configured, the clients will retrieve the settings from the server and execute the tests according to the configured interval. When the execution is complete, the tests results are saved in a shared folder which the server processes periodically.
From the CCD Server UI (http://duetserver:port/duet/diag) you can have a clear view of the landscape client’s statues. You can also troubleshoot a client problem without connecting to the client itself.
Three more things this feature has to offer:
- The CCD allows you to develop your own tests quite easily and distribute them to your Duet landscape using the CCD platform. The Duet Administration Guide explains how to develop the tests in .NET, and once you have them ready in a DLL, you can simply place them in the CCD tests folder and the Duet clients will use them as they would any other test!
- When you install the CCD client component, it also installs the latest version of the Duet Support Tool on the client, so if you ever need to troubleshoot a client locally, you will have this useful troubleshooting tool ready for you to use on the same installation path as the CCD.
- As of Duet 1.5 SP2, you can configure the CCD to collect the client’s logs. This means that if one of the CCD tests fails or ends with a warning, it will automatically collect the Duet client’s logs and place them on the server. This way you might not need to interrupt the user’s work if you need to perform advanced troubleshooting for a client!
In conclusion, the CCD is a time-saver and helpful feature for administrating and troubleshooting Duet clients. If you have Duet in your landscape without CCD, you should really give it a try 🙂
If you are interested in more detailed information about the CCD, check out this excellent Wiki page created by Stefan Schwing.
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