The Broker facilitates communication between clients and Managers. During installation, you are prompted for the host location of the Broker and its port number. This information is stored in the SM_BROKER_DEFAULT environment variable. This variable is used by all programs to find the Broker. The default host setting for the variable is localhost, and the default port setting is 426.

An client performs the following steps to determine the Broker’s location.

  1. Verifies whether the Broker’s location was specified as an option at startup. When this option is specified, no other options are checked.

  2. Checks the value of the SM_BROKER_DEFAULT environment variable. If this variable is set, no other options are checked.

  3. Checks if the Broker is running on the host smarts-broker and listening on TCP port 426.

  4. If smarts-broker is not defined, the program checks port 426 on localhost.

    Note:

    The hostname smarts-broker is usually an alias, such as a DNS CNAME.