Typically, you use a change management procedure when you install a set of new or changed policies, or when you modify the configuration files for the Policy Agent or other policy-related applications. A structure for storing and maintaining the configuration files and policy definition files that are related to the general policy infrastructure is provided by the Configuration Assistant, and you can use it to manually create and edit the configuration files and policy definition files. The structure is based on three location levels:
The staging level is the location in which you manually edit your definitions, or into which you upload definitions from the Configuration Assistant.
The production level is the location to which you copy your staging definitions when you are ready to put your changes into production. This is the location from which your Policy Agent and other policy infrastructure components read their definitions.
The backup and recovery level is the location to which you copy your existing production definitions before you copy your staging definitions to your production location. If the changes are in error, you can back out the changes by copying your original production definitions from the recovery location to the production location and restarting your policy infrastructure components.