Manage Environments

Setting up work environments is the first step to implementing Release Management. Work environments help you structure a projects lifecycle by providing validation steps. Combined with formalized testing phases, this ensures application reliability – even during periods of intense change. Multiplying environments means that you will want to minimize component transfers between them. It also means that you will need to organize and manage them rigorously so that they do not degenerate into anarchy and then obsolescence.

THE SOLUTION

ARCAD-Deliver will help you automate the entire Release Management cycle across all your servers (for Environment management in an SCM context see the ARCAD-Skipper page). Everyone involved in a revision effort can forget about the components physical location; ARCAD-Deliver handles these logistics once and for all. Users then manipulate a logical view based on their responsibilities in the release process.

The following environment types are managed in ARCAD for Release Management:

• An integration environment
• A test environment
• A reference environment. By definition, this environment is unique and contains all the components as they  appear in production
• Environments for production after Deployment

An environment may contain all or part of an application’s components.

THE ADVANTAGES

Environment Security
In ARCAD, environments are protected in a logical manner. For example, if any user profile tries to modify source from the reference environment, the modification will be intercepted, and the user will receive an error message and only be allowed to browse. This makes it easy to enforce the change protocols that you have established.

ARCAD Adaptability
A Release Management tool must be adaptable to different configurations, including architectures hosted on various types of servers. This is the major strength of the ARCAD product line.  We can support the simplest and the most sophisticated architectures. Depending on the size of your team, the need for a hierarchical organization will vary. Each client has their own standards and special configuration needs, and ARCAD can handle them all. In ARCAD, all transfers to test and production, as well as distribution and installation on remote machines are already defined as standard processes. These processes are provided with the product and can be adapted to any organizations needs. They have variables and properties that are perfectly adapted to automating transfers to test and production, such as automatic recovery and message logging functions.

Dynamic Configuration Management
ARCAD provides environment variables/properties that allow you to create your own attributes and associate them with your applications. These variables can then be assigned different values for each environment. They can be used in processes as well as be substituted into your configuration files (i.e. -  .properties files).  These variables follow the ARCAD hierarchy and have inheritance capabilities making them easy to manage. This feature allows you to deal with unique situations in configuration management.