Deep Dive element of Application deployment via Nomad -1e

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Author Nawaz

What is Nomad?

In simplest terms, Nomad is network protection technology, but it is so much more. The patented technology intelligently uses spare network bandwidth to reliably and securely deliver things like operating system upgrades, software deployments, and patches to thousands of PCs, servers and sites without disruption. “Intelligently” means that it utilizes the percentage of network bandwidth that you prescribe and it automatically throttles back and forth depending on the total traffic. So, your network is always stable, always protected, and always available for the business requirements. If a connection goes offline, Nomad even provides auto-recovery.

 

I won’t be speaking much in detail about Nomad features, nomad has the only agent and it becomes very much difficult to analyze the workflow so instead, let’s see if an application is installed then how nomad takes over as alternate downloader from SCCM client download content into SCCM cache

Lab Details :

SCCM DP Name: CM01

Machine Name: W10PEER-0001 (Nomad is already installed on the machine)

Application to be installed: Google Chrome 81.0.4044.113 RZ20107357

Content id : Content_fcc92af3-e2e3-4c65-a619-7ed4e254ac64

Triggering installation from Software Center

 

Open CAS.log (the Content Access Service log file) from CCM log files folder  search with content ID Content_fcc92af3-e2e3-4c65-a619-7ed4e254ac64 

 

Open the ContentTransferManager.log from the same location as the CAS.log. Identify the point where the CTM job started for this content (it will correspond to the time of the “Submitted CTM Job {…}” in the CAS log as seen in the extract above). Note that the Content Transfer Manager modifies the content provider to NomadBranch

 

Its time to open Nomadclient log :

Open C:\ProgramData\1E\NomadBranch\LogFiles\NomadBranch.log

Identify the point where Nomad is invoked by the CTM. The log extract below shows the ICcmAlternateDownloadProvider.DownloadContent being invoked at which corresponds to the time that the ContentTransferManager modified the provider to NomadBranch, Also, Identify the point where the list of available content locations presented to Nomad appears

 

Identify the point where the election starts and identify which computer wins the election. In the log extract below it can be seen that W10PEER-001 wins the election. Any other machine in the same subnet doing the same deployment, W10PEER-001 will act as master and will transfer content instead of Distribution Point.

Since, this is the first machine in the subnet to get content so it will get the content from DP, identify the point where the elected master requests the *.LsZ file to be generated on the DP

 

Identify the point where the agent on the DP intercepts the request and generates the *.LsZ file, now Nomadbranch.log file to be checked on DP CM01

 

Identify the point where the master starts to download the content from the DP

 

Identify the point where the master completes the download and performs the content hash check. Note that the STATISTICS log entry indicates that this client (the master) got 100% of the content from the DP. You can also see the hardlinks being created from Nomad Cache to SCCM Cache,

 

Now had to install Google chrome on another machine to show that content is not taken from DP and it’s taken from master machine W10PEER-0001(192.168.1.101)

After this SCCM Client will take over about installation of Application. The same workflow applies to legacy Package and Patching deployment.

 

Happy Sharing.

 

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