Message Forwarding Overview, Message Server Overview, Message Server Configuration
Message forwarding is configured in the sense of a "pull:" the message server that is to receive messages is the one that is configured. The relationship between a message server configured for forwarding and a forwarder is nearly identical to the relationship of a message viewer to a message server. This allows a single machine to be configured to gather messages across an entire network for processing by a message handler or download through an Internet gateway.
When an Enterprise message server starts, it attempts to connect to each forwarder specified in its configuration file. The configuration file is created through the Configurations Dialog.
Configuration elements (view configuration dialog)
Name
The name of a forwarder is used for two purposes; a registry key is created with that name to store state information about the forwarder such as the last message it downloaded, and the name is used to identify the forwarder in the context field of notification messages.
IP address and Port
These comprise the network identifier of the machine messages are to be received from.
Cookie
The message server maintains a marker in the registry to indicate the last log message successfully received from the forwarder. The cookie takes the form of a GUID. Unlike message viewer connections, when a connection to a forwarder is first established, it normally does not send all the messages in its message server cache. When a forwarding relationship is first established, the cookie will be set to indicate the last log message in the cache. From that point on, any new messages will be delivered by the forwarder and the cookie maintained automatically. This behavior can be overridden at the time a configuration is uploaded. The configuration can specify whether the forwarder should start at the beginning of the cache, the end of the cache, or where it last left off (in the case of re-configuration).
Filter
Messages downloaded by a forwarder can be pre-filtered in the same manner as messages downloaded to message viewers.
Retry schedule
A retry schedule can be assigned to each forwarder. If the forwarder cannot be reached or the connection is dropped, the message server will try to connect to it again after a configurable interval. See the topic Configuring Retry Schedules for more information.