Introduction

The Fredhopper Deployment Package contains the Deployment Agent, which provides you with a centralized way to manage your Fredhopper environment remotely. Its goal is to simplify the creation, configuration, and management of your Fredhopper infrastructure.

By using the Fredhopper Deployment Agent you can:

• create and control Fredhopper installations
• configure new instances that contain particular business configurations and data
• backup and restore the configuration and data of those instances.

The Fredhopper Data Manager has a new set of job steps that allow you to control the Deployment Agent.

Basic Concepts

Deployment Agent

The deployment agent is a daemon/service running on a machine with one or more Fredhopper processes running.

As described in the introduction, the deployment agent controls installations of Fredhopper, named instances of a Fredhopper installation that contain particular business configuration and data, and allows starting, stopping, and monitoring of processes on those instances.

Installation

An Installation of Fredhopper contains the content of a Fredhopper distribution. Installations are done by providing a distribution archive to the deployment agent, which registers the distribution, and makes it available for the creation of new instances or updating of existing instances.

An installation exists in a particular directory that is controlled by the deployment agent, and while it is possible to execute commands inside that installation, typically all manipulation of installations happens through the deployment agent.

New installations can be created at any time, and removal of installations is only possible when no instance refers to that installation.

Instance

An Instance is a named set of business configuration and data (indices) for an installation.

The deployment agent creates instances by cloning the installation's content into a new directory and initializing configurations so that the instance can be used.

New instances can be created at any time, removal of instances can only happen if no process of that instance is currently running.

Cluster

The collection of all instances.

Process

A Process is a single application that can be executed in the context of an instance. Processes are usually either long-running and execute in the background, or one-time, executing on-demand and then stopping.

Example processes are Qserver, Replication Server, etc.

Processes' verbs (actions) are invoked on an instance using the deployment agent by their name. The exact verbs and arguments are process-specific, although most of the processes provide at least stop, start, and status verbs.

Verb (Action)

A Verb is any action that can be invoked on a process. Invoking a verb may require additional arguments. Common verbs are "start", "stop" and "status."

Roles

A Role is a description of the processes that should be running in this instance when it is fully operational. The role definition also contains information on how to start and stop those processes.

Features

Installations and Instances Management

1. Install/uninstall a specific FAS distribution.
2. Create/remove a FAS instance.
3. Retrieve the configuration settings for a particular installation and/or instance.

Controlling Processes

1. Start/stop a given instance's process (e.g. qserver process).
2. Get the current status of a given process (i.e. is it running or stopped).

Backup / Restore of Instance Configuration and Data

1. Back up a given instance by exporting its configuration and/or data into a capture file.
2. Restore a given instance by using a previously created backup (capture).

File Management

1. Download/upload and delete files to/from a given instance or installation.
2. List the files in a specific directory residing on a given instance or installation.

Role Management

1. Add/remove a specific role to/from a given instance.
2. List all available roles for an instance.
3. Invoke a command for a given role on a specific instance.

Discovery

1. Discover all other agents that this agent currently knows about.
2. Get the environment this agent is running in.
3. Retrieve all available installations for this agent.
4. Retrieve all available instances or instances available for a particular installation.
5. Retrieve all available processes for a given instance.
6. Retrieve all verbs (actions) supported by a given process (e.g. start, stop, etc.).

Monitoring

1. Retrieve all available monitoring (JMX) objects for a given process and their corresponding attributes.
2. Get the value of the specific monitoring (JMX) attribute.
3. Modify the value of the specific monitoring (JMX) attribute.

Clients

Command Line Interface

One way to use a Fredhopper Deployment Agent is by invoking commands through its command-line interface.

$ bin/deployment-agent-client [global options] command [command arguments]

Example commands are "install", "list-instances", "add-role", etc.

Data Manager Components

Another way for controlling a Fredhopper Deployment Agent is through the Fredhopper Data Manager . During the installation, you will have an option to install a set of data manager components too. Then you can use them to automate your work with the deployment agent.

REST API

Your final choice is to directly use the REST API of the Fredhopper Deployment Agent. It exposes most of its functionality in the form of REST web services.

Sample request for executing a certain verb (action) of a given instance's process would be

http://<agent_host:agent_port>/instance/<name>/process/<process>/verb/<verb>

The full reference for the client commands/URLs can be found on Fredhopper Deployment Agent API