PeerLink Help > Getting Started

1.	All participating hosts must be highly available file servers, accessible across highly available and stable networks.

PeerLink only propagates locks when a file is opened with a read-write lock (e.g. MS Word, MS Excel, etc.). If a file is opened in read-only mode without an exclusive write lock, or if the application closes all handles to the file (e.g. Notepad, WordPad, etc.), the lock will not be propagated to the Target Hosts.

In order for file collaboration to work correctly, all end-user file access and modifications must be done through a network share or network mapped drive, and not performed locally on the participating host. If you access a file in the Watch Set locally on the participating host, then file locks will not be propagated to the Target Hosts.

A PeerLink Agent must be installed on all participating hosts. Each host machine must be running Windows 2003 Server or later with the latest service packs and a minimum of 1GB of RAM (512MB of which is dedicated to the PeerLink Agent service). Depending on the level of activity on the system and the number of running applications, required system RAM will likely be higher. The host machine must be acting as a file server where the Watch Set is located on a locally attached storage device. The Watch Set cannot be located on a NAS device that is mapped through a network share. Support for NetApp storage devices (licensed separately) is available, but configuration is handled in a different manner. Please see the NetApp Configuration section for more information.

5.	The PeerLink Agent is installed as a Windows service under the default SYSTEM user account. The user that the service is running under should have read+write access to the Watch Set

The PeerLink Hub must be installed on a highly available Windows 2003 Server or later with at least 2GB of RAM, and must have at least 512MB of RAM dedicated each to the PeerLink Hub and PeerLink Broker applications. This is the default minimum recommended configuration, but the amount of RAM can be increased via custom configuration to optimize performance.

7.	All participating file servers must be NTFS formatted. Support for NetApp storage devices (licensed separately) is also available.

All participating hosts must have network access to the machine where the PeerLink Broker is installed, which by default will be the same machine where you installed the PeerLink Hub. You will also need to configure the PeerLink Agent to connect to the PeerLink Broker's host name or IP Address, and allow firewall access to the configured port, which is 61617 by default. You will also need to allow access from all participating hosts to port 8181 of the machine that the PeerLink Hub is running on.

9.	PeerLink is intended to be installed and maintained by a qualified System Administrator and not a typical end-user.

Important Notes

Collaboration of the Users Home directories (Redirected Folders, Roaming Profiles, etc) are not supported. Overlaying File Locking (which is inherent within the PeerLink framework) with these file types and the nature of these folders will cause conflicts.