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Nightly sync of data between Production Server & Staging Server RTC 4.0.5


vishnudharan manivannan (1183642) | asked Jul 22 '14, 9:14 a.m.
 Hello All,

I would like to know if this is a supported requirement/use case.

We have our Production RTC server (JTS+CCM 4.0.5) in our environment with Tomcat & DB2 configured as app server and database server.

It is all in one single server topology.

Now we have a staging server of the similar configuration and setup.

I would like to know if we can have a nightly sync of Data between the Production Server and Staging server.

Which includes the below steps
*Online backup of Prod Server
*Restore the backup on staging server
*Server rename operation so that the URLs are changed to the Staging env host name.

I need to automate this process so that the data b/w Prod and Staging are in sync every night.

Is this a supported use case in RTC or there is an alternate approach ? Please advice.

Thanks
Vishnu M 

Comments
Ralph Schoon commented Jul 22 '14, 10:43 a.m. | edited Jul 22 '14, 10:45 a.m.
FORUM ADMINISTRATOR / FORUM MODERATOR / JAZZ DEVELOPER

As far as I am aware, to do a server rename (URI change) you need to get a license from support to be able to execute the operation. You should talk to support if your scenario is supported. This depends on what you want to do with the staging server.

As far as I know it is not for all cases. Only for upgrade tests for example. For one thing you need to isolate the server that has been renamed from the other one, because, essentially they contain the same data and you don't want to get them entangled. In fact, you must avoid this at all cost.

Online backup is another thing. As described in https://jazz.net/wiki/bin/view/Deployment/BackupCLM online backup is not yet fully supported in 4.x. You need to be aware of the index files which basically require to stop work item changes at some time to be able to back them up.


vishnudharan manivannan commented Jul 23 '14, 12:48 a.m. | edited Jul 23 '14, 1:59 a.m.

@ Ralph : Yes , I understand we require the ServerRename feature key file from IBM. But what I wanted to know is can a Server Rename be done multiple times with the same mapping file ?


To make it more clear,
The URLs of data in the production server would be https://production.server:9443/ccm/MigrationProject
now when I backup the Prod DB and Restore on Staging DB, I would have to rename the URLs by Server Rename so that all the items get renamed to https://staging.server:9443/ccm/MigrationProject

my mapping file would be 
Source URL : https://production.server:9443/ccm/
Target URL :  https://staging.server:9443/ccm

Is it possible to Server Rename multiple times(nightly/every week) ?

2 answers



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sam detweiler (12.5k6195201) | answered Jul 22 '14, 10:40 a.m.
edited Jul 22 '14, 10:42 a.m.
I don't know if its 'supported' or not, but its pretty interesting and should be doable.  altho I don't know how you queisce the RTC apps without shutting them down completely

do you need EVERY night? once a week should be enough..  staging is new app features..
a few workitems shouldn't make that much difference..

what do you do when the database gets huge?  (as u wouldn't be doing db deltas)

Comments
vishnudharan manivannan commented Jul 23 '14, 12:54 a.m. | edited Jul 23 '14, 1:59 a.m.

 @Sam : Once a week should also be enough. The DB size is not too huge as far as I know.. 


But the only thing I would like to know is if it's possible to rename the URLS every week ?

The main goal of the staging server is to have the Production data synched with it so that we can have our stakeholders do the acceptance testing when we upgrade RTC to a newer version. We avoid risk here as we do the tests with Live Prod data and only if all the tests are passed, we upgrade the Prod environment.

Thanks again for ur feedback!



vishnudharan manivannan commented Jul 23 '14, 4:27 a.m.

 @Sam : Also based on https://jazz.net/library/article/98

It's mentioned " You do not need to quiesce the database while taking online backups, in fact, for Rational Team Concert to function normally; one should never quiesce the database."


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Ralph Schoon (63.1k33646) | answered Jul 23 '14, 2:00 a.m.
FORUM ADMINISTRATOR / FORUM MODERATOR / JAZZ DEVELOPER
I don't see a reason why you could not do that. If it is e.g. for migration testing with the renamed server, it would also be a supported scenario.

Comments
vishnudharan manivannan commented Jul 23 '14, 4:10 a.m.

 @Ralph : Okay.. I do have another input here.. I know a .mapping event file is created when the server rename takes place. Will that file over ride everynight when the URLs are being renamed on the staging server ?


sam detweiler commented Jul 23 '14, 7:52 a.m.

wouldn't you erase the mapping file on every copy, as u are starting over..


Ralph Schoon commented Jul 23 '14, 8:03 a.m.
FORUM ADMINISTRATOR / FORUM MODERATOR / JAZZ DEVELOPER

The mapping file as input to the server rename needs to be provided by you.

I can only talk about do's and dont's here. How you can automate it is a whole other story and highly dependent on your systems. If you can automate it at all.

I don't know what files are generated during the rename and I would certainly suggest to do a full teardown, before trying it again.


vishnudharan manivannan commented Jul 23 '14, 8:16 a.m.

@Sam : Though we erase the mapping file, the .mapping event file will have the source & target URL pair in it. If we provide a new mapping file with the same combinations, then I doubt if it will over ride or give an error stating the rename is already done with this pair.


@Ralph : Sure, thank you very much for your inputs!! Yes certainly I would teardown before trying it again.


sam detweiler commented Jul 23 '14, 8:18 a.m.

I meant the same as Ralph, tear down the staging completely and rebuild.. so at that point rename has not been done.


Ralph Schoon commented Jul 23 '14, 8:35 a.m.
FORUM ADMINISTRATOR / FORUM MODERATOR / JAZZ DEVELOPER

I would assume that the mapping file does not change that mucht, as long as you don't add new Jazz servers etc. Hard to tell.

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