Automatic patching of remote file servers

[DanLancaster]

We are about to install some remote file servers. I see PTC has configured Windchill to automatically patch remote file servers. This is enabled from this property:

wt.intersvrcom.autoManageCCS=true

When the master server is patched, soon after that the patch files are copied to the remote servers, and are automatically installed. After reading up on this feature, I'm not sure this is what we want to do. It seems complicated and a little risky. I think we'd rather do the patching manually.

Has anyone had any expericence with this ? Do you let it patch automatically, or do you disable that property by setting it to FALSE ?

Dan Lancaster

Solar Turbines Inc.

[RandyJones]

I always patch manually like this:

1. Update the master server
2. copy the contents of master Windchill/codebase/CCSTools/update/ to remote file server Windchill/codebase/CCSTools/update/
3. restart Windchill on the remote file server
   • Occasionally Windchill will need to be re-restarted because it has an error in extracting and applying the updates.

If you have test servers setup, to test the patching on before hand, can copy the "precopied" contents from "test remote file server" Windchill/codebase/CCSTools/completedUpdate/ to "production remote file server" Windchill/codebase/CCSTools/update/ for step 2 above. If you have a slow WAN connection this can save you time.

[GaryMansell]

Dan,

I looked into Auto-Patching Replica's a while ago, and decided against, choosing to do the patching of the Replica's at the same time as I patch the Master during an out of hours maintenance window - that way you don't get any nasty surprises and are more in control of what is going on with your System.

I have seen the extraction of the CcsDsu.zip file fail when the Replica does it automatically, and also that the Replica will not start after it has been patched - I think it is best to know about these issues at the time, rather than getting a nasty surprise when the Replica next restarts, or even worse an out of hours call because a Replica in a different timezone location is not working after an Auto Update.

It is a very simple task to manually patch the Replica's once the Master has been patched, rather than leave it to Windchill, I do a completely manual process:

1) Shutdown Replica

2) Copy the update files from <Master>\codebase\CCSTools\update to the same location on Replica

3) Then in a Windchill Shell run the following commands:

cd c:\ptc\windchill\bin\ccstools

ant -f install_ccsdsu.xml

4) Check the above command completes sucessfully and that that the CcsDsu.zip and CcsDsu.zip.MD5 files have been moved to the folder C:\ptc\Windchill\codebase\CCSTools\completedUpdate

5) Start Windchill and check the Replica logs that it started OK

I also set the following property in site.xconf in case PTC ever change the default to ensure that no automatic patch updates occur:

<!-- Disable Auto Update of Replica Servers -->

<Property name="wt.intersvrcom.autoManageCCS" overridable="true"

targetFile="codebase/wt.properties"

value="false"/>

Hope that helps

Rgds

Gary

[ptc-6456635]

Where is this property found?

[GaryMansell]

Jamie,

You should set the property in your local site.xconf file (this is where all your site properties should be set), these local properties are then propagated into your Windchill config files using the command "xconfmanager -p" from a windchill shell.

You will then be able to find the resulting properties in the target file pointed to in the site.xconf property line from above, so in this case:

targetFile="codebase/wt.properties"

So you will find the result in the file wt.properties in the codebase sub-directory of your Windchill loadpoint.

Rgds

Gary

[MichaelStertz]

Dan,

we have this property set to true and the only difference to having it set to false is that the CcsDsu files become copied automatically und the install process gets started when restarting the file server.

There is a 40 percent chance of this install process to fail but typically everythings fine after the second try.

If you have your file server stopped upfront the update you can do everything manually like the property would be set to false.

Keep in mind that a running WindchillDS is needed for the update process to succeed.

Michael