Failures in SP2 First Site Deployment have identified a requirement for EA to have a loopback network adaptor configured with the VIP of the Load Balanced virtual server of the DAS/EA pool. The network loop back adopter is deployed on the Enterprise Archive. The EA should have the loop back adopter requirement documented in the install and upgrade manuals.

There are 2 Methods of Deployment

Method 1. Isolated L2 VLAN with Static Route.

Load Balancer acting as the DAS/EA server default gateway. DAS/EA server on isolated L2 Network.

Method 2. Direct Routing (DR)/Direct Server Return (DSR) Mode

DAS/EA servers deployed on L3 network with default gateway as the customer switch/router, same as rest of PACS/ETP servers. DAS/EA Servers require a loopback network adaptor configured with the VIP of the Load Balanced virtual server of the DAS/EA pool. Load Balancer must support DR/DSR and requires load balancer specific settings (not covered here).

Requirements: DAS/EA servers are set up on an isolated L2 network, using the L2 shared/floating IP of the Load Balancer pair as their default gateway. Customers need to add a static route for the DAS/EA L2 network that points to the L3 shared/floating IP of the Load Balancer pair.

Why? The DAS/EA server must identify the IP address and AE-title of the DICOM client to authenticate its privileges. This behavior enables multiple DICOM entities to share the same AE-title while still allowing for different privileges and profiling to be assigned. (Note that in a DICOM-compliant ecosystem, AE-titles should be unique). This setup relies on the fact that Load Balanced DAS/EA servers cannot directly communicate with the modalities and instead redirect the generated packets back to the load balancer, which acts as their gateway. This allows the load balancer to route these packets back to the TCP sessions established between the DICOM client and the DAS/EA virtual IP.