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Recently became responsible for administration of an on-premise environment without test or dev environments. Where can I find documentation to help the server and database administration teams?

  • 1.  Recently became responsible for administration of an on-premise environment without test or dev environments. Where can I find documentation to help the server and database administration teams?

    Posted Oct 02, 2017 12:32 PM

    Recently became responsible for overseeing the administration of an on-premise environment without test or dev environments. High turnover and changes of responsibilities have created a situation where the server and database administration are not very familiar with the environment. Unfortunately my experience has primarily been with the SaaS solution for CA PPM.

     

    Is there definitive documentation for how to set-up a test environment step-by-step? I've been combing through the the documentation and knowledge stores, but am coming up a little empty handed, so I feel like I may be looking in the wrong place. Additionally, I've found that many links on the CA website lead to pages that no longer exist.

     

    At the moment my Server and Database administrators are trying to figure out how to set up the configurations for server names and ip addresses and "getting the web/app servers to connect to the database". I am new to this organization, but the administrators appear to be intelligent, just unfamiliar. Unfortunately, the individuals responsible for the initial environment setup are no longer around which is why I am trying to help them by gathering information and documentation that can get them on the right track.



  • 2.  Re: Recently became responsible for administration of an on-premise environment without test or dev environments. Where can I find documentation to help the server and database administration teams?

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Oct 02, 2017 12:54 PM

    Hi Anthony,

     

    We do have the documentation on how to install a PPM and here is the documentation 

     

    CA PPM - CA PPM - 15.1 - CA Technologies Documentation 

     

     

    Regards

    Suman Pramanik 



  • 3.  Re: Recently became responsible for administration of an on-premise environment without test or dev environments. Where can I find documentation to help the server and database administration teams?

    Posted Oct 02, 2017 01:26 PM

    If we wanted to, for example, copy our prod environment to a new server and turn that into a test environment to ensure that it is a mirror of Prod, is there documentation for how to do that and what configurations need to change?



  • 4.  Re: Recently became responsible for administration of an on-premise environment without test or dev environments. Where can I find documentation to help the server and database administration teams?
    Best Answer

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Oct 02, 2017 02:31 PM

    Hi Anthony,

     

    No we dont have that but here are some pre requisites and high level steps 

     

    Pre Requisites 

     

    1. Ensure PPM version along with patch is same for production and development 

     

    High Level steps 

     

    1. Take a database dump/export from production while services are stopped as we have seen issues with Hot back up 

    2. Stop all the PPM services on Development

    3. Start the CSA and Beacon service and update the database details 

    4. If all the connections are successful then you can start the app and bg services 

     

    Note: As you said you dont have development now then below steps you should follow

     

    1. Install a Vanila PPM on one of the box with the database dump provided with the ISO 

    2. Upgrade to the patch level of current production by applying the patch 

    3. Once the patch is successful stop all the services and import the production database dump to development database and you should be good to go 

     

    Let me know if you run into any issues.


    Regards

    Suman Pramanik 



  • 5.  Re: Recently became responsible for administration of an on-premise environment without test or dev environments. Where can I find documentation to help the server and database administration teams?

    Posted Oct 02, 2017 02:10 PM

    If you want to have a look how the current environment is set up you can see that in the CSA on the various pages.

    Another place to look is the properties.xml file in Clarity\config folder on the Clarity server.

     

    If you can figure out some text of the subject of the pages that do not exist try search. Many of them still do exist, but the address is different.



  • 6.  Re: Recently became responsible for administration of an on-premise environment without test or dev environments. Where can I find documentation to help the server and database administration teams?

    Posted Oct 02, 2017 02:18 PM

    Regarding your next post what you need to do is avoid conflicting server names and IP's and such.

    It is also preferred not to have prod and dev/test on the same server so you would be looking for more hardware as well.

    I do not think the documentation guides you there.

    There is an old thread which touches that a little

    How do you guys handle an off-site Disaster Recovery plan? 

    .



  • 7.  Re: Recently became responsible for administration of an on-premise environment without test or dev environments. Where can I find documentation to help the server and database administration teams?

    Posted Oct 03, 2017 05:17 AM

    Hi Anthony,

     

    If you do what Suman says it's really straight forward. 

    An even easier method is to simply copy the directory and database, then deploy onto the new machine/db.

    Just be very careful to update the properties file and wipe email addresses before starting the services.

     

    if you want a step by step guide, I wrote one and if you email me I will share.

     

    Andrew



  • 8.  Re: Recently became responsible for administration of an on-premise environment without test or dev environments. Where can I find documentation to help the server and database administration teams?

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Oct 03, 2017 05:42 AM

    Hi Andrew,

     

    Thank for pitching in, always appreciated. I hold back copying PPM file structure because it involved changing properties.xml and its error prone  

     

    Regards

    Suman Pramanik  



  • 9.  Re: Recently became responsible for administration of an on-premise environment without test or dev environments. Where can I find documentation to help the server and database administration teams?

    Posted Oct 03, 2017 09:34 AM

    Just wondering again...

    Are you saying the copy or the changing the properties is error prone?

    If you use admin backup the copy should have less errors and be much faster.

    Once you have made restore and set the environmental variables and have tomcat and jdk can't you set the rest of the properties in CSA?

     

    P.S. How would I find admin backup in the documentation?  with search????

     

    P.P.S. Andrew please would you like to email me the guide as well.



  • 10.  Re: Recently became responsible for administration of an on-premise environment without test or dev environments. Where can I find documentation to help the server and database administration teams?

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Oct 03, 2017 11:59 AM

    The best way to do is always pull up the CSA and update and not make changes directly to the properties.xml 



  • 11.  Re: Recently became responsible for administration of an on-premise environment without test or dev environments. Where can I find documentation to help the server and database administration teams?

    Posted Oct 03, 2017 04:03 PM

    Hey Andrew, I went ahead and sent you an email this morning.