Contents
About this Release
Welcome to Deployment Automation version 6.1.4. See the What's New tab for a list of new features in the latest release.
If you have an existing installation that you want to upgrade, see Upgrades.
Supported Configurations
Detailed information about supported platforms and software configuration is available in the Supported Platform List.
Third-party Tools
For more information regarding third-party software copyrights and license information, refer to the Attribution Report.
What's New
For information on changes included in this release, see the following:
Enhancements and New Features
The following enhancements and new features are included in this release.
- New Artifactory Source Config Types
The following Artifactory Source Config Types are now available when creating components:
- Folder-based
- Maven
- NuGet
- New Artifactory Plugin
A new Artifactory plugin is available to be used in conjunction with the Artifactory Source Config Types. It can be used to download artifacts imported directly from an Artifactory repository, including artifacts from the following:
- Artifactory-managed folders
- Maven
- NuGet
Note: The download is done directly from the agent during execution of the process that has this download step. - New Silk Central Plugin
A new Silk Central plugin is available. It can be used to execute single or multiple plans.
- Enhanced Component Mapping
Component mapping has been enhanced to enable you to map multiple components in an application to selected resources as follows:
-
Add all resources and groups to all the components
- Add all resources and groups to the selected component
- Remove all resources and groups from all the components
- Remove all resources and groups from the selected component
-
-
Compatibility with ChangeMan ZMF Connector 6.1.2
The ChangeMan ZMF Plugin now supports ZMF Connector 6.1.2, enabling integration with ChangeMan ZMF 8.1.2.
The updated plugin has a minimum version support of Deployment Automation 6.1.4.
- Improved Performance
Performance has been improved in the following areas of Deployment Automation:
- Process Editor
- Process executions
- Requests
- New User Interface URL and Other Name Changes
Some name changes were made to reflect the Deployment Automation name and co-branding as follows:
- The user interface is now accessed using a new default URL. For
example:
http://myHost:8080/da
- Various file and plugin names have changed throughout from Serena RA to DA
- Installation and profile files are installed to Micro Focus and .microfocus respectively on new installations
- The user interface is now accessed using a new default URL. For
example:
For details on the new features and installation and configuration, see the Deployment Automation User's Guide or User's Help on Documentation Center.
Defect Fixes
In addition to the enhancements, a number of defects were addressed.
Visit the Knowledge Base to see the defects fixed in this release.
Upgrades
This section provides important information for upgrades to Deployment Automation 6.1.4. Before you upgrade, review the following sections, and then proceed with the upgrade.
- Backing Up Deployment Automation
- Server Upgrades
- About Notification Schemes
- About JRE and Common Tomcat Versions
- About JDBC Files
- About Agent and Agent Relay Upgrades
- About Plugin Upgrades
Backing Up Deployment Automation
Before upgrading the server, you should back up your current server as follows:
- Stop Common Tomcat.
- Run the following backups in any order.
Note:
- These backups should be done in a single session while Common Tomcat is stopped so that the data stays in sync.
- The default profile and installation locations are different in version 6.1.4 than for earlier versions of Deployment Automation.
- Backup your database. If Derby is used this step can be omitted.
- Backup your
Deployment Automation
profile folder and its subfolders.
The default location of the profile on Windows for Deployment Automation versions earlier than 6.1.4 is:
C:\Users\username\.serena\ra
where username is the name of the system user under which the server was installed
Tip:To find the location of your profile for earlier versions of Deployment Automation, view the installed.properties file under the serena_ra web application and look at the installLocation property. You can find the installed properties in the Common Tomcat web application conf folder. The default location for the installed.properties file for Deployment Automation versions earlier than 6.1.4 is:
C:\Program Files\Serena\common\tomcat\8.0\webapps\serena_ra\conf
- If you have any subfolders in your profile that are virtual links pointing to external storage such as relocated CodeStation directories, you should backup those external storage locations as well.
- Backup your
serena_ra web application. It is recommended
that you backup the entire
C:\Program
Files\Serena\common\tomcat\8.0
folder that contains your
serena_ra web application, but at minimum back
up the
serena_ra folder and its subfolders. The default
location for
Deployment Automation
versions earlier than 6.1.4 is:
C:\Program Files\Serena\common\tomcat\8.0\webapps\serena_ra
- Continue with your upgrade.
Server Upgrades
You can upgrade to this release from the following on Common Tomcat servers only:
- Deployment Automation versions 5.1.2 to 6.1.3
- Serena Release Automation versions 5.1 and 5.1.1
If you are upgrading from Serena Release Automation versions earlier than version 5.1, first upgrade from that version to version 5.1 as documented in the version 5.1 Deployment Automation User's Guide, and then upgrade to version 6.1.4.
For any other upgrade scenarios, please contact Support for assistance.
To upgrade a Deployment Automation server:
- Before beginning the upgrade, backup your current server as detailed in Backing Up Deployment Automation.
- Download and run the version 6.1.4 server installer.
-
UNIX/Linux Only: As part of the upgrade installation process for a Deployment Automation UNIX/Linux server system, you must specify the owner of the Deployment Automation installation.
You must ensure that the user specified is also the owner of the Common Tomcat instance, especially when Common Tomcat hosts other applications in addition to Deployment Automation. The owner is the user name used to run the Common Tomcat process. During the upgrade, folders inside the Common Tomcat instance are configured as owned by the specified owner, and if the user name and owner do not match, the Common Tomcat process may not be able to read them or write to them.
If the upgrade of Deployment Automation does not also involve an upgrade of the Common Tomcat system, then the specified user name is used in a number of commands to set the ownership of the following folders:
tomcat/8.0/work
tomcat/8.0/temp
tomcat/8.0/logs
<user profile location>, by default: /opt/Micro Focus/da/microfocus/.microfocus/da
During a Common Tomcat upgrade, the ownership of the entire Common Tomcat installation is set to the specified user name. A Common Tomcat upgrade is done when upgrading from Deployment Automation version 6.1.0 or earlier, but not when upgrading from version 6.1.1 and later.
- Access the web interface using the new URL format:
http(s)://<serverName>:<port>/da
where serverName is the server where the Common Tomcat resides that hosts Deployment Automation and port is the Common Tomcat port.
Use http for non-SSL and https for SSL installations.
For example: http://myhost:8080/da
About Notification Schemes
The new notification schemes are added to existing schemes during the upgrade. To keep backward compatibility, if changes for a scheme are detected, the upgrade does not affect that scheme; otherwise, the scheme is upgraded to the latest version.
About JRE and Common Tomcat Versions
The Deployment Automation 6.1.4 server and agent are installed with Common Tomcat 8.0 and JRE 8.0 on all platforms.
If you are upgrading from a version of Deployment Automation earlier than version 6.0 and you have custom SSO configuration settings, you must apply the same settings to Common Tomcat 8.0 accordingly.
In Deployment Automation version 6.1.4:
- Servers support only Java version 8.0 (Java JRE or JDK 1.8.0.25 or later)
- Agents and agent relays support Java 6.0, 7.0, and 8.0 (Java JRE or JDK 1.6.0.43 or later, 1.7.0.25 or later, 1.8.0.25 or later)
About JDBC Files
The required JDBC driver files that are used by Deployment Automation versions 6.0 and later to connect to the Deployment Automation database are provided by the installer. This means you do not have to download the drivers before you perform a new Deployment Automation install. If you are upgrading from an earlier version and you modified the standard JDBC drivers, the upgrade process preserves your existing JDBC files and connection information, and automatically copies the files to the appropriate directory location for you.
About Agent and Agent Relay Upgrades
For details on upgrading Deployment Automation agents and agent relays, see the Deployment Automation User's Guide or online Help.
Known Issues
For a complete and up-to-date list of issues found in this release of Deployment Automation, refer to the Knowledge Base.
Issues known to exist at the time of release are as follows:
- For Oracle databases, the
Common Tomcat
service takes a long time to restart after an upgrade.
Several plugins are upgraded in this release and until the upgrade process completes, the Deployment Automation server running on Common Tomcat is unresponsive. Errors may appear in the Tomcat log.
- When a proxy server is used, a WebSocket error occurs upon
initiating the Web client.
The client now requests a WebSocket connection upon initial connection to the server. If you receive a WebSocket error, you may need to configure your proxy server to support the WebSocket connection. In some cases, the proxy server may need to be upgraded. For more information, see Knowledgebase item S141934.
- Existing agents may not come back online after the server
upgrade.
Due to changes to supported security protocols starting in version 6.1.1, Deployment Automation agents using earlier versions of Java, such as Java 6, may not be allowed to connect to the server after the upgrade. If your agents do not come online after the server upgrade, you will need to upgrade them by following the instructions in Knowledgebase item S141622.
- When a large number of agents are moved from one unidirectional
agent relay to another, agents of versions prior to 6.1.2 may not automatically
appear online.
When a large number of agents are changed to point to a different unidirectional agent relay, agents of versions prior to 6.1.2 may not automatically come online. These may be listed as CONNECTED or OFFLINE.
To bring them online, in the Agents / Pools pane you can click the Test icon or you can restart the agents.
- When trying to install the agent on a RedHat 7.3 system that is
using the Adwaita theme, the installer page disappears.
If you are using the RedHat 7.3 with the Adwaita theme and try to install the Deployment Automation agent, the installer page disappears and you cannot complete the installation. This is due to the fact that the Adwaita theme is missing some objects used by installer. This works fine with other themes, such as Oxygen. For details on changing the theme, see Knowledgebase item S142064.