Q1: I have seen references to 'Star Topology' for execution server communication. Can someone please clarify what that means and what is the right method of configuring this communication?
Ans: Star Topology in context of Release Automation is referencing to a topology where one of the NES becomes the supernode of other NES’s. This NES will be a central point which will allow agents which resides on other NES’s to communicate with each other.
To answer question how to configure the same please refer to below article
How do I enable communication between 2 agents on different execution
With advancement in RA version this configuration changes can be done via ASAP UI interface as described below.
Q2: Is there an easy way to create custom actions in release automation? For example for a non-programmer creating a REST action using the SDK can be very cumbersome and time consuming?
Ans: We recently released the CA Release Automation Rapid Development Kit or RDK for this purpose. It enables a non-Java programmer to quickly wrap common API calls including REST as native actions for RA.
RDK 1.0 can be downloaded from support.ca.com and is listed under RA 5.0 SP01
Q3: I found NolioUpdate service with new install of product version 5.0 what is it used for? What part of product depends on this?
Ans: The Nolio Update Service is a broker that enables deploying new and updated action packs into RA. The action management part under Administration in ROC depends on this.
Q4: I want to know how do we cache and how we determine available size of cache in case of artifact distribution? How application behave when cache size is not enough to hold new request do system raise alert/fails or swap out unused?
Ans: The cache size is configured in the nimi_config.xml, FIFO, however if required for single file is higher than configured, it will be extended (based on free disk space). Please refer to below configuration which control cache size
Note: Please change it cautiously as it do have dependency on chunk_size and other system configurations. We recommend not to changes these settings before consulting RA Support.
Q5: Is there a way to clear out the stored artifact in nexus via RA, which will no more be used?
Ans: There is an option to clear an artifact from the RA repository (Nexus). As per current feature set It is on a one by one basis and there’s currently no built-in feature to perform this in bulk or using a "older than" rule.
Please find instruction on how to clear artifacts from RA Nexus repository
Q 6: From 5.0 onwards we see an additional port 61616 for NES i.e. named as broker port. What is this broker port?
Ans: RA 5.0 introduced a new communication mechanism between management server and execution server using ActiveMQ which uses port 61616, which is referred as broker port.
Q7: In RA 5.0 we store/load manifest used by process and display them as previously loaded manifest. How can we remove manifest from the list where we stored them?
Ans: The manifest files are all kept in the repository configured for RA. There's no direct way to remove previously loaded manifests from the list in the UI.
Q8: Is there a way to roll RA logs?
Ans: Most of the logs are rotatable and can be configured at log4j.properties. Please refer to below document on communities for reference.
Configure log retention and log size
Q9: In system settings, what is the parameter 'DYNAMIC_AGENT_MAPPING_ENABLED'?
Ans: We have the ability to install an agent and, during installation, to associate the agent to a given environment and server type. When doing so, the agent is being mapped automatically after being connected to the system.
This flag turn this feature on/off.
Q10: Can I import/export .dat files between different versions of Release Automation?
Ans: There as been incremental design improvisation and changes in successive release of release automation, which makes it ideally difficult to import a process from lower version of RA to be imported into new version. With more advancement and feature set introduced in RA 5.0 to be more enterprise ready the import of application and processes from lower versions is not supported. For example a .dat export from 4.7.1 environment may not work as expected post import in 5.0.
As a recommendation we always recommend to upgrade the base system of lower version to higher version, as only in this process all the relative dependencies, schema etc are taken care.
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Other useful links:
FAQ-2 on CA Release Automation