Setting up global configurations

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Application administrators can use the following information to understand what to configure and where to configure it so that Global Configuration Management (GCM) works with the IBM® Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) applications that are enabled for configuration management.

Prerequisites

ELM must be installed. For more information, see Installing Jazz® Team Server and Engineering Lifecycle Management applications.
Ensure that you understand how other configuration-enabled applications contribute to global configurations. To learn more about configuration management, see Configuration management: Concepts and capabilities.
You must be assigned the Administrator role in the GCM application.

About the topic

The topic describes a typical deployment, which has one GCM instance (regardless of the number of Jazz Team Server [JTS] instances) across the deployment. If your organization has teams with isolated ELM deployments that need to collaborate across multiple lines of business, you can set up multiple GCM instances in a deployment so that teams can share global configurations. It's an advanced feature. To set up your deployment in this way, read the topic carefully, and then see Enabling GCM servers to contribute configurations to other GCM servers.

Note: A GCM installation has a self-signed certificate for the local host (localhost), but users access GCM through the fully qualified domain name. Therefore, browsers display a warning if the site is untrusted. Even after you add a security exception, the browser might block key dialog boxes, such as those that list configurations from ELM applications. The following solution fixes the problem:

Request a certificate that is signed by a trusted certificate authority (CA). The signed certificate eliminates the warnings from the browser. For more information, see Installing a security certificate.

Setup

Run the Jazz Team Server (JTS) setup, which registers and sets up all the ELM applications that you installed on the JTS, including GCM. In a distributed environment, you must run the JTS setup on the other JTS instances to ensure that the applications are registered correctly. For more information, see Completing the installation of Jazz Team Server and ELM applications.
If the ELM and GCM applications are registered to the same JTS, activate configuration management as described in Setting up ELM applications to use local configurations. Otherwise, follow the steps in Additional setup for a multiple Jazz Team Server (JTS) topology.

Additional setup for a multiple Jazz Team Server (JTS) topology

Some distributed deployments have multiple JTS instances, which can improve scalability, increase redundancy, or avoid a single point of failure. To set up global configurations in a distributed deployment, ensure that you read all the following steps carefully before you complete it.

Note:

These steps are applicable when both of the following statements are true:
1. You have more than one JTS instances.
2. GCM needs to communicate with contributing applications that are not registered with its own JTS instance.
Contributing applications are OSLC configuration providers that have the configuration management capability enabled for one or more of their project areas. For ELM, the contributing applications include CCM, GCM, QM, and RM.
If your browser blocks pop-up dialog boxes that you need to log in to GCM or ELM, see Pop-up blocker preventing GCM or ELM login.

Communication between GCM and contributing applications is enabled through friend relationships. The required friend relationships depend on the contribution cache mode that is set on the Advanced Properties page of the GCM server.

The default cache mode is set to TRS caching (Use MQTT for contribution cache property set to false), and is appropriate for most customers. The MQTT caching (Use MQTT for contribution cache property set to true) is an advanced cache mode that is required for collaborating GCM servers and deep component skew detection. Third-party contributing applications are not impacted by the cache mode setting, but still require bidirectional friendships between themselves and GCM.

When the cache mode is set to TRS caching: The JTS of the GCM application must be friends with all contributing applications, and each JTS of the contributing applications must be friends with GCM. This method allows GCM to communicate with all contributing applications, and each contributing application to communicate with it.
Example: Suppose that JTS1 is the JTS to which the GCM server is registered, and JTS2 is a different JTS to which contributing applications are registered. The friend relationships between these two JTS instances must be set as shown in the following image:
Similarly, for three JTS instances, JTS1, JTS2, and JTS3, the friend relationships must be set as follows:
When the cache mode is set to MQTT caching: Each JTS must be friends with all contributing applications. This method allows every contributing application to communicate with every other contributing application.
Example: Suppose that JTS1 is the JTS to which the GCM server is registered, and JTS2 is a different JTS to which contributing applications are registered. The friend relationships between these two JTS instances must be set as shown in the following image:
Similarly, for three JTS instances, JTS1, JTS2, and JTS3, the friend relationships must be set as follows:

Now that you understand the requirements for setting up friend relationships between GCM and contributing applications, you are ready to follow these steps:

Set up a directional friend relationship from the JTS of the GCM application to each contributing ELM application present on the other JTS instances (for both TRS and MQTT cache modes).
These friend relationships correspond to the blue arrows in the preceding diagrams.

On the Server Administration page, on the Server tab, in the Communication section, under Friends (Outbound), add a friend relationship to each ELM application.

Ensure that you accept each incoming friend relationship in either of the following ways:
1. When you create a friend.
  If you are an administrator of the contributing application that is being added as a friend, you can authorize the provisional key immediately after its creation. To authorize a friend relationship, on the Add friend wizard, after you create a friend, click Next > Grant access for the provisional key.
  
  In the same step, set a functional user for the authorized friend. The functional user does not require any privileges and can be any user on the remote JTS. For convenience, you can use the pre-defined application users, such as ccm_user, qm_user, rm_user, and dm_user, and gc_user for the respective ELM application.
2. After the friend creation, from within the respective ELM application.
  Important: The GCM and RM applications authorize friend relationships through their JTS, but the CCM and QM applications authorize their friend relationships directly.
  - For the GCM and RM applications: Authorize the friend relationship on the OAuth Consumers page of the JTS of the application. On the toolbar, click Administration > Jazz Team Server Home > Manage Server > Consumers (Inbound).
  - For other applications (CCM and QM): Authorize the friend relationship on that application's administration page. On Application Administration page > Consumers (Inbound) > OAuth Consumers page.
  On the OAuth Consumers page, set a functional user for each authorized friend (one for each ELM application). For convenience, you can use the pre-defined application users, such as ccm_user, qm_user, rm_user, and dm_user, and gc_user for the respective ELM application.
For more information about establishing or configuring friend relationships, and editing consumer keys, see the related tasks.
Set up a directional friendship from the other JTS instances to the GCM application directly (TRS cache mode), or to each contributing ELM application present on the same JTS instance as the GCM application (MQTT cache mode).
These friend relationships correspond to the orange and green arrows in the preceding diagrams.

Use the steps in 1 to create and accept friend relationships for the orange and green arrows in the diagrams in the same way that you did for the blue arrows.

For more information about establishing or configuring friend relationships, and editing consumer keys, see the related tasks.
Set the Global Configuration Provider URL property for each JTS in the topology, except the one that GCM is registered to so that contributing applications use the correct GCM instance.
This property is on the JTS server properties page, in the Global Configuration SDK set of server properties. The URL must have a fully qualified domain, for example, https://example:9443/gc/.

For more information about configuring advanced properties, see the related task.
Specify the link index (LDX) provider URL on the JTS properties page for each JTS in the topology, except the one that LDX is registered to.
Edit the Link Index Provider URL property in the Links Component set of server properties. The value must be a URL with a fully qualified domain, for example, https://example:9443/ldx/.

For more information about configuring advanced properties, see the related task.
Activate configuration management as described in Setting up ELM applications to use local configurations.

The setup is complete.