PolicyCenter Sharable Attributes

All PacketShapers, regardless of whether they are configured in local or shared mode, operate with an effective configuration that is comprised of two kinds of attributes: non-sharable and sharable.

Non-sharable attributes are those parts of a unit’s effective configuration that are specific to that one unit. These are called non-sharable because no other Packeteer device will function correctly if configured with all the same non-sharable values as another unit. Every unit will have a unique set of non-sharable attributes, though more than one unit can be individually configured with some of the same non-sharable attributes, such as DNS name or time and date. A unit’s non-sharable attributes are always stored locally on that unit. Although these attributes can be changed through the unit’s browser or command-line interfaces, non-sharable attributes cannot be configured or managed through PolicyCenter.

A PacketShaper ’s sharable attributes are those parts of the unit’s configuration that can have values in common with other PacketShapers. Traffic classes, policies, partitions and routers are all examples of sharable configuration attributes, because many different units can have the same traffic classes, or share the same router. When a unit is in shared mode, it applies all the sharable attributes from its assigned PolicyCenter configuration.

PolicyCenter organizes its configurations into hierarchical groups, with parent and child configurations. With hierarchical configuration groups, a parent configuration can have more than one child configuration, and a child configuration can have children of its own, creating a PolicyCenter configuration tree with several levels of depth. A PolicyCenter child configuration will inherit the sharable attributes defined on its parent configurations.

PacketShapers can be assigned to configurations in any level of the configuration tree, not just child configurations. Non-sharable configuration values must be changed through the individual units' user interface. Sharable attributes for both unit and group configurations can be altered via PolicyCenter.

Here is a list of configuration attributes that can and cannot be shared:

* High availablity and watch mode router settings can be defined for a PolicyCenter configuration, but these settings are not sharable, and if they are defined on a parent configuration, its child configurations will not inherit those settings. A draft configuration is a child of the original configuration being edited, and does not display the current high availability or watch mode router settings of its parent configuration. However, when you add or modify high availablity and watch mode router settings on a draft configuration and then commit those changes back to the original configuration, the original parent configuration will correctly apply and display its new settings.

** Only the host side manual or host side auto setting is sharable from a parent configuration to its child configurations. All other host side settings should only be configured on an individual unit configuration via PolicyCenter.

***Global Xpress settings, tunnel mode settings, tunnel class overrides, and service overrides are all sharable from a parent to a child configuration. PolicyCenter allows you to create and configure new tunnels and add and remove local and remote hosts on individual unit configurations only.