Topology tab

The P4Admin Topology tab is a Technology Preview feature introduced in 2021.4.

Important

Features offered in Technology Preview mode are unsupported and may not be functionally complete. If you use any features in Technology Preview mode, Perforce would appreciate your feedback and any functionality suggestions before the feature becomes supported. Please email us at [email protected]

The Topology tab displays a graph of all the connected services in your multi-server deployment.

In this example, the topology feature is running on the service associated with the ServerID "PLAY-FED" that is providing the service of type commit-server. Because P4Admin ran the topology command against "PLAY-FED", it anchors the graph and has the largest icon.

To get basic information about a particular service, hover the mouse over that service. A tooltip pops up to show the service type and the IP address(es) it is listening on.

To get additional information about a particular service, click its icon to display the Server Info detail panel

This shows:

  • the ServerId "Name" associated with the selected service, as well as the service type

  • a list of the IP address(es) associated with the selected service

  • the output of the p4 info command, followed by the settings of the Configurables for that service

  • the Open Connection button that allows you to add that server to the list of Connections and work with that connection in P4Admin

To zoom in or out, use the mouse wheel.

Each service type has its own icon.

Icon

Type of Server
commit-server
standard
edge -server
replica
forwarding-replica
standby
forwarding standby
build-server
proxy
broker

unknown, which means one of the following:

  • the server type is not recognized

  • a connection from a known service to the "unknown" service. In this case, the graph cannot display the ServerID for the missing service, and instead displays the IP address for the missing service. For example, the graph might show the icon for a service of type broker with brokerParis as the ServerID and a connection to DestinationServerAddress of 123.123.123.123:2, but the graph receives no data representing 123.123.123.123:2 as its ServerAddress.
Note

  • This is a graph of services, not of servers. A given server might provide one or more services. A given service might be associated with one or more IP addresses.

  • The Topology tab is available for use if:

    • P4Admin is connected to a server running Helix Core (P4D) version 2021.2 or greater
      and

    • you are a user with the super permission level

Note

For information about the underlying Helix Core command, see p4 topology in Helix Core Command-Line (P4) Reference

Known limitations

Currently, we are aware of the following limitations:

  • A service cannot be removed from the graph, even if the server that ran that service has been decommissioned.

    Note

    If a server is down, the "Server Info" detail panel will lack the data from p4 info, even if the graph still shows the service(s) associated with that server.

  • If a service changes any of its IP addresses, that service will be associated with both the former and the current IP addresses.

  • There is no filter to set the point in time the graph represents.