Enabling GCM servers to contribute configurations to other GCM servers
Some teams with isolated IBM® Engineering Lifecycle Management deployments need to collaborate on product assemblies across multiple lines of business. As an experiment in implementing this use case, you can configure a Global Configuration Management (GCM) server to accept contributions from different GCM servers. The contribution of a global configuration from one GCM server to a global configuration on a different GCM server is called an external contribution.
Before you begin
Configuring a GCM server to accept contributions from different GCM servers is an advanced feature with several constraints. Ensure that you understand the following GCM concepts:
- External contribution
- The contribution of a global configuration from one GCM server to a global configuration on a different GCM server.
- Contributing applications
-
Contributing applications are OSLC configuration providers that have the configuration management capability enabled for one or more of their project areas. For Engineering Lifecycle Management, the contributing applications include GCM, IBM Engineering Workflow Management (Engineering Workflow Management or CCM), IBM Engineering Test Management (Engineering Test Management or QM), and IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS® Next (DOORS Next or RM).
- Home GCM server
- The GCM server that applications can contribute local configurations to.
The applications that can contribute local configurations to global configurations are Engineering Workflow Management, Engineering Test Management, and DOORS Next.
The domain-specific applications can contribute local configurations to only one GCM instance, their home GCM server. Jazz Team Server indicates the home GCM server in one of the following ways:- Explicitly by the value set in the Global Configuration Provider
URL advanced server property.
If the contributing applications are registered to a different Jazz Team Server than GCM, you must specify the home GCM server on the Jazz Team Server for those applications.
- Implicitly by the GCM instance that is registered to that Jazz Team
Server.
If all contributing applications are registered to the same Jazz Team Server as GCM, that GCM instance is automatically the home server, so you need not set the Global Configuration Provider URL property. Registering multiple GCM instances to the same Jazz Team Server is not supported.
- Explicitly by the value set in the Global Configuration Provider
URL advanced server property.
About this task
When to enable GCM servers to contribute configurations to other GCM servers.
- You can't get the scalability or performance you need from a single GCM instance, even if that instance runs on a more powerful system.
- You are prepared to install and maintain Eclipse Amlen.
- You are prepared to configure and maintain several project area associations: one for each current and potential project area that a GCM instance interacts with across all deployments.
- You can configure at least one instance of the Link Index Provider (LDX) to accept feeds from all the Engineering Lifecycle Management applications in a deployment, including the other GCM instances in the other deployments.
- You can set up external contributions that meet the constraints.
If your organization needs more time to meet the conditions, you might consider setting up multiple project areas in a single GCM instance to achieve similar control over contributions between servers. If your organization is ready to enable contributions between GCM servers, ensure that you understand the prerequisites.
Before you proceed with the steps, read the following topics carefully and ensure that you understand the feature, when to use it, its constraints, and the examples. Read the prerequisites first.