Working with Environments

As an Administrator, you manage Environments and their dynamic properties to guarantee the readiness of the endpoints where the Applications will be deployed. Environments can be also provisioned to reduce manual effort.

Important! The actions that you can perform depend on your folder permissions, see: Folder Permissions.

Viewing Environments

Environments are managed within the Environments (list and calendar views) and Provisioning main sections of the Release Automation perspective.

Additionally, the Related tab of an Application displays its related Environments and Deployment Targets.

Tip: For more information about how to search for entities and narrow down the results, see: Global Search

Environments List

From this list you can:

• See a list of Environments you have read access to.
• Edit the properties of an Environment from the sidebar.
• Trigger the most common Actions from the Toolbar.
• Click the left icon or hover over the Environment name on the column header to access its full functionality.

Note: To see the list of Environments on a Blueprint, navigate to Provisioning > Blueprints, open a Blueprint and double-click the Environments tab. For more information, see Provisioning Environments.

Environment Calendar

The Environment Calendar shows both Environments and their Reservations sorted by date. See Working with Calendars.

Viewing Installations

See:Application Installations

Custom Views

You can define custom views for Environments as described in the Custom Views section. Beside the custom properties; depending on the Environment type, you can select different system properties to be used in the filters (for example, name, type, status...).

Creating Environments

You can create any type of Environment from the Environments list and the Environment Calendar.

To Create Environments from the List

1. Click the Create button in the toolbar. The Create Environment dialog is displayed.
2.  Provide the following information in the pop-up dialog:
   • Name: name of the Environment. It has to be unique within the system and can only contain alphanumeric characters, blanks, ., -, _, @, $, #.
   • Type: each Environment has a type, for example, a pre-production/test/production Environment. You can only select a type for which you have the permission to create. Each Environment type may have its own custom properties and property sets defined by an administrator (refer to Environment Custom Types for more details).

     Note: The Environment type cannot be changed after creation.

   • Folder: the name of the folder in which the new entity is stored (see also: Security Concept).
   • Owner: the name of the owner of the new entity..

     You can select the current user or one of the user groups the user belongs to as owner (or one of all active user groups for administrators). To assign a different user, edit the entity after creating it.

3. Click Create.

To Create Environments from the Environment Calendar

Follow the steps described above.

Editing the Properties of Environments

• General

  In the General panel, you can view and edit the basic properties of an Environment:

  • Name: name of the Environment. The Environment name can only contain alphanumeric characters, blanks, ., -, _, @, $, #.
  • Type (read only): each Environment has a type which determines its properties and which is selected during creation. You cannot change the type of an Environment after creation.
  • Folder: the folder on which the Environment is stored
  • Owner: the user or user group who owns the Environment. The owner is set after creation to the user who creates the Environment and may be changed by the owner only.

• Description

  Description is limited to 4000 characters.

• Provisioning

  Note: This section is only available for provisioned Environments.

  Click the Status Overview button to open the Properties view of the provisioned Environment.

• Actions

  Actions are located in the toolbar. They can be also triggered from the context menu displayed after right-clicking the entity. You can trigger the following actions (depending on your permissions):

  • Duplicate: see Duplicating Environments.
  • Export: exports the Environment definition in CSV format.
  • Delete: see: Deleting Environments ).
  • Archive: archives the selected entity. If an entity is archived, Restore is available (see Archiving Entities)

• Errors and Warnings

  The panel shows all errors and warnings related to the current Environment.If there are no errors or warnings, the panel is not displayed.

• Custom Properties

  The selected object may have more properties and property groups defined by the administrator. When defined, these properties are shown in the sidebar as separate panels and can be edited by you.

• Statistics & History

Duplicating Environments

1. Click the Duplicate action in the toolbar. The Duplicate Environment - Setting dialog is displayed.
2. Optionally, enter a new name for the Environment. The Environment name can only contain alphanumeric characters, blanks, ., -, _, @, $, #.
3. Select an owner for the new Environment. The owner of the original Environment is selected by default.
4. Click Next to navigate to Step 2.
5. Select the targets from the current Environment that should be referenced. All targets on the source Environment which the current user has read access rights to are shown. You can select all targets by clicking the Deployment Target checkbox.

   Note: The selected targets are not duplicated but only referenced.

6. When clicking Create, the Environment gets duplicated, and the selected targets are added to the new Environment.

   Note: Targets are not removed from the current Environment.

The following information will be copied:

• Properties
• Dynamic properties
• Selected targets for duplication

Selected targets duplicate the same information as described in Working with Deployment Targets.

Notes:

• Duplicated targets do not copy Environment assignments. All duplicated targets are only assigned to the new Environment.
• The deployment handlers of the target will be copied and point to the original targets.

Information that will not be copied for the Environment:

• Reservations
• History Records
• Properties of type Identity

After creation you will be redirected to the properties page of the new Environment.

Defining Dynamic Properties

Environments allow you to define dynamic properties that can be used in deployments in the General / Dynamic Properties section. See About Properties for details.

The following system defined dynamic properties are available in addition to the custom dynamic properties and the custom properties (in the /custom namespace):

• /system/name

  Name of the Environment

• /system/type

  Type of the Environment

• /system/owner

  Display name of the owner of the Environment.

Deleting Environments

• Right-click the entity and select Delete.

Note: You may only delete the entity when you have the appropriate permission on the containing folder (see Security Concept) and all of the listed conditions are met.

Conditions to delete entities of type Environment

• Not referenced by any Reservations
• Not referenced by Deployment Profiles
• Not referenced by environment Snapshots

Working with the Deployment Targets Related to the Environment

In the General / Deployment Targets section of an Environment you can manage all Deployment Targets which belong to the Environment.

Creating Deployment Targets

Click the Createbutton in the toolbar to create a new deployment target and assign it to the Environment.

Assigning Deployment Targets

Click the Assign button in the toolbar to assign/remove an existing Target to/from the Environment.

Notes:

• Click a target to edit its properties in the sidebar.
• Click the remove action to remove a target from the Environment. The target will not be deleted.

See also:

• Provisioning Environments
• Working with Calendars