Bundles and Promotion Overview
Overview
The Bundles and Promotion feature is designed to facilitate migrating (promoting) groups (bundles) of workload automation definitions (Triggers, Workflows, Tasks, Calendars, Custom Days, Variables, Business Services, Credentials, Agent Clusters, Virtual Resources, Scripts, Email Templates, Email Connections, Database Connections, SNMP Managers, SAP Connections, PeopleSoft Connections, Applications, and Universal Templates) between Universal Controller instances.
This allows you to develop, modify, and test changes in a non-production environment and migrate them to your production environment in a fully secure and audited manner (with back-out capabilities, if required).
One or more Workload automation definitions of the same type can be promoted without going through the process of creating a bundle, or you can use a bundle to group together related workload automation definitions of different types for promotion at the same time.
Bundles can be promoted manually or scheduled to be promoted at a specific date and time. If you choose to schedule a bundle promotion, you can either promote the definitions as they stand at promotion time or use a snapshot of the definitions as they stand when the promotion schedule is created. This can be useful if you have completed changes that need to be promoted out-of-hours but want to allow more changes to be made on the source system without having to wait until the promotion is complete.
CLI (Command Line Interface) and API (Application Programming Interface) functions are provided to allow you to integrate the bundles and promotion feature with your external application life-cycle, source management, and change control systems.
If you plan on using the Bundles and Promotion feature, it is important that you review the recommended best practices for this feature.
Bundle and Promotion Security
Use of the Bundle and Promotion feature requires some thought, based on which users require the feature and what functions they need access to.
Bundle Security
The ops_bundle_admin role, which automatically is encompassed within the ops_admin role, grants the following functions:
Create, read, update, and delete Bundles.
View Promotion Targets, including agent mappings.
View Promotion History
View a record's list of bundles
View Promotion Schedules.
Generate a Bundle Report
Users can be granted more granular permissions to Bundles via their User or Group permissions:
Read - View bundles based on name and/or membership of business service.
Update - View, and Modify bundles based on name and/or membership of business service.
Create - Create, View, and Modify bundles based on name and/or membership of business service.
Delete - Delete bundles based on name and/or membership of business service.
The Promote command for a bundle can be granted or denied via the Bundle permission.
Users can select definitions only for Bundles that they can at least view.
Promotion Security
The ops_promotion_admin role, which automatically is encompassed within the ops_admin role, grants the following functions:
Create, read, update, and delete Promotion Targets, including agent mappings.
View Bundles.
Promote or schedule the promotion of a bundle.
Reschedule, cancel, and delete Promotion Schedules
Accept bundles being promoted to a target server. (The Accept Bundle command is executed on the target server automatically as part of the Promote and Promote Bundle commands and does not involve user interaction.)
Note
By default, the ops_promotion_admin role also grants Read permission for any type of definition that can be added to a Bundle, given the expectation that a promotion administrator would review the content of a Bundle before promoting it. To change this default behaviour, see the Promotion Read Permission Required Universal Controller system property.
Users can be granted more granular permissions to Promotion Targets via their User or Group permissions:
Read - View promotion targets based on name and/or membership of business service
Update - View, and Modify promotion targets based on name and/or membership of business service
Create - Create, View, and Modify promotion targets based on name and/or membership of business service
Delete - Delete promotion targets based on name and/or membership of business service
The Refresh Target Agents command for a promotion target can be granted or denied via the bundle permission.
The ability to Promote a Bundle without the ops_promotion_admin role requires:
Read permission to the Bundle
Permission to the Promote command for the Bundle
Execute permission to the Promotion Target
ops_promotion_accept_bundle role assigned to the target user; specifically, the user specified on the Promotion Target or on the Promote Bundle command dialog.
Bundleless Promotion
With the ops_promotion_admin role, users can promote definitions by clicking Promote... in the Action menu.
The Bundleless Promotion With Execute Permission Permitted Universal Controller system property can be set to true (default = false) to allow promotion of definitions outside of a Bundle without requiring the ops_promotion_admin role if the users also have Execute permission to at least one Promotion Target.
Universal Controller Properties
The following Universal Controller system properties also should be reviewed in accordance with the desired behavior of the Bundles and Promotion feature:
Promotion Accept Bundle Create/Update Permission Required
Promotion History Retention Period in Days
Promotion Read Permission Required
Promotion Schedule Retention Period In Days
Promotion Strict Mode