Configuring RAS Publishing Agents

To view RAS Publishing Agents installed in a Site, navigate to Farm > <Site> > Publishing Agents in the RAS Console. The installed Publishing Agents are listed on the Publishing Agents tab in the right pane.

A Site must have at least the primary Publishing Agent installed, which is marked so in the Priority column. You can also add secondary agents to a Site for redundancy (described in the section that follows this one).

To modify the configuration of a Publishing Agent, select it and then click Tasks > Properties (or right-click > Properties). The Properties dialog opens where you can modify the following:

• Enable Server in site: Enables or disables the Publishing Agent. The option is enabled for secondary Publishing Agents only. It is disabled for the primary Publishing Agent.
• Server: Specifies the FDQN or IP address of the server that hosts the Publishing Agent. To automatically resolve IP address to FQDN, enable the global Name Resolution option. For details, see Host Name Resolution.
• IP: Specifies the server IP address. Click the Resolve button to obtain the IP address automatically using the FQDN specified in the Server field. This IP address is used so that multiple Publishing Agents share information in real time.
• Alternate IPs: Specifies one or more alternate IP addresses separated by a semicolon. These addresses will be used if RAS Secure Client Gateways fail to connect to the RAS Publishing Agent using its FQDN or the address specified in the IP field. This can happen, for example, if Gateways are connecting from a network which is not joined to Active Directory.
• Description: A user-defined description.
• Standby: If selected, puts a secondary Publishing Agent into a standby mode. This means that no agent will connect to this Publishing Agent until another Publishing Agent goes offline. This option is enabled automatically for any new secondary Publishing Agent in excess of the three agents that already exist. It is not recommended to have more than three active Publishing Agents because it may degrade system performance. Using this option you can have more than three agents, but have them in standby mode until they are needed. For more information, see Secondary Publishing Agents.

When done making the changes, click OK and then click Apply in the main RAS Console window.

The Tasks drop-down menu on the Publishing Agents tab has the following items:

• Add. Adds a RAS Publishing Agent to the Site. See the section that follows this one for the information on how to add secondary Publishing Agents.
• Upgrade all Agents. Upgrades agents to the current version. The item is disabled if all agents are up to date.
• Tools. Gives you access to a set of standard server management tools.
• Troubleshooting. The Check agent menu item verifies that the Publishing Agent is functioning properly. It opens a dialog where you can see the verification results and optionally install (or uninstall) the Publishing Agent. The Logging menu item allows you to configure logging and retrieve or clear log files. For more information, see Logging.
• Promote to primary. Promotes a secondary Publishing Agent to primary. The current primary becomes a secondary Publishing Agent.
• Refresh. Refreshes the Publishing Agents list.
• Delete. Deletes a secondary Publishing Agent from the Site. To delete the primary Publishing Agent, you first need to promote a secondary Publishing Agent to primary.
• Settings audit. Opens the Settings Audit dialog where you can view the changes that were done to the Publishing Agent. For more information, see Settings Audit.
• Move up and Move down. Changes the priority of a secondary Publishing Agent (moves it up or down in the priority list).
• Properties. Opens the Publishing Agent Properties dialog (see above).

RAS Publishing Agents overview

In addition to the Publishing Agent editor described above, you can also see the summary about the available RAS Publishing Agents. To do so:

1. In the RAS Console, navigate to the Farm > <Site> .
2. The available RAS Publishing Agents are displayed in the Publishing Agents group on the Site Info tab.
3. To go to the Publishing Agents editor, right-click a RAS Publishing Agent and choose Show in the editor.

For additional info, see Sites in the RAS Console.