Setting up communications with remote servers

If you want to manage remote servers — servers on a different network from your BMC Server Automation system or outside your network's firewall, for example — you can set up your Application Server to communicate with those servers through your SOCKS internet protocol proxy servers.

To set up communications through a SOCKS proxy server

1. Develop a policy for routing to the remote servers by identifying the following:
   • The remote servers you want to manage.
   • SOCKS proxy servers to route communications. You should also decide whether or not those servers resolve host names.
   • A way to categorize remote servers so that you can set up rules for routing to them. This categorization can be based on a single (new) server property or a combination of several server properties.
2. Configure Application Servers to route traffic to Network Shell proxy servers. Using a Network Shell proxy server prevents issues that can occur when any type of action causes files to be copied from a server behind one SOCKS proxy to a server behind another SOCKS proxy. For information about Network Shell proxy servers, see Setting-up-a-Network-Shell-proxy-server. The most common examples of this are: Snapshot, Audit or Compliance job that includes Extended Objects stored in a NSH path on the file server, Windows Patching Jobs (the metadata copy happens via a NSH copy), and File Deploy Jobs.
3. Create the proxy server objects and add them to the BMC Server Automation infrastructure. See Creating-SOCKS-proxy-server-objects.
4. Use the Network Routing wizard to create a network routing policy and rules for routing communications to servers. See Creating-rules-for-routing-to-remote-servers.
5. Add the remote servers you want to manage. See Adding-remote-servers.

The following topics provide detailed instructions for setting up remote servers: