Problematic Server Configurations

SBM Application Repository allows you to create certain server configurations that are not recommended and that could make it difficult to use all of the renew features. In particular, you can create overlapping environments and multiple Orchestration Engine (JBPM) target servers. The following sections discuss these configurations.

Overlapping Environments

In a correctly configured SBM system that has multiple environments, each environment will have its own distinct Application Engine server, and Event Manager server, and an Orchestration Engine server. The Orchestration Engine and Event Manager servers are known to Application Repository as "target servers." The Orchestration Engine installation and database is represented by BPEL Server (JBPM) on the Target Servers tab. The Event Manager server is represented by System Event Manager.

Application Engine and the target servers should be unique to a specific environment so environments do not overlap. However, you can create overlapping environments, because Application Repository lets you reuse the same server in a different environment. This is not the intent of environments, and in most cases it is undesirable and unintended. It means the server is not fully owned by a particular environment and cannot be managed in isolation. You could have created such environments accidentally by using the Clone operation, or could have created them for testing purposes. It is strongly recommended that you clean up such environments before you run renew.

Renew can be used with overlapping environments in a limited capacity, but it is necessary to understand your configuration thoroughly and understand the following limitations of renew:

Using renew to redeploy when there are overlapping environments is problematic and is not recommended. You can use renew to clear the Orchestration Engine database but to ensure correct results, you should use Application Repository to manually redeploy each of the process apps from the overlapping environments from which they were originally deployed.

By default, renew tries to detect overlapping environments and will ask for confirmation before redeploying. (If you use the -nowarning option with renew -redeploy, no confirmation warning is presented.) The -listenvs command also detects overlapping environments.

Note: Overlapping can only be detected if the same server name is used across the environments. If different names are used (for example, "localhost," an IP address, and a DNS name), overlapping is not detected, even if these names point to the same physical server. Make sure you thoroughly understand your system configuration.

Multiple Orchestration Servers

In a correctly configured SBM system that has multiple environments, each environment will have one Application Engine server, one Event Manager server, and one Orchestration Engine server. However, Application Repository lets you create multiple Event Manager and Orchestration Engine target servers for an environment. This is unintentional, because Application Repository can only deploy to the first Event Manager and Orchestration Engine server in the list. You could have created such duplicate target servers accidentally by using the New or Clone operation. It is strongly recommended that you fix this so there is only one Event Manager and one Orchestration Engine target server defined for each environment before you run renew; otherwise, contact Serena Support for guidance.

Renew uses the same algorithm as Application Repository to select the Orchestration Engine server from the list of target servers; this should result in the first one found in the list being used. However, it is possible for the list to get re-ordered, which could result in renew (and Application Repository) deploying orchestrations to the wrong Orchestration Engine server. To prevent this, make sure there is only one Orchestration Engine server in the list and that it is configured correctly.

By default, renew tries to detect multiple Orchestration Engine servers in an environment and will ask for confirmation before redeploying. (If you use the -nowarning option with renew -redeploy, no confirmation warning is presented.) The renew -report command also detects multiple Orchestration Engine servers in an environment.