The migration and deployment process can be divided into five major phases: planning, migrating, analyzing, backing up the system, and deploying.
During the planning phase, you review information such as assets, objects, hardware and software requirements, system and asset configuration, and other aspects of the source and destination environments. As you complete this review, you document this information. You also begin creating instructions for the migration and deployment process that can be refined over time.
For more information about the types of information to gather during planning, see Deployment planning.
During the migration phase, you use information from the planning phase to prepare an application package for migration. To ensure that a consistent version of the application is packaged, stop all development activities for the application to be migrated while the assets are exported. This work stoppage is accomplished by coordination between the users in the development environment and the solution administrator who completes the export. Ideally, the documentation that you develop during the planning phase includes both information about communicating the work stoppage to the correct teams and the steps for implementing it.
The migration phase includes the capture of information from the source environment to include in the application package. The source information is needed to transform environment-specific values into values that are valid for the destination. This transformation can be accomplished through operations in the migration tools that map and convert the values. For assets that cannot use the migration tools, the information might be documented manual steps for editing the asset after it is migrated into or deployed to the destination environment.
For more information about exporting, importing, and converting FileNet P8 based assets, see Deploying assets based on Content Platform Engine and Deploying assets with FileNet Deployment Manager.
During the analysis phase, you analyze the impact of the deployment on the destination environment. This analysis enables identification and mediation of issues that might cause errors. In some tools, this analysis is known as a change analysis impact report. If this report is generated, it can be archived and used for review or audit activities. The archived reports can be used iteratively, to improve the migration and deployment process.
Assessing the impact on the destination environment might be of little concern when the destination is a test environment that is easily reconfigured. However, when data is imported into a destination that is an in-use, production environment, performing this analysis is crucial to the integrity of the production environment.
Some tools that are used to perform the migration and deployment tasks provide analysis capability. For example, from FileNet Deployment Manager, you can generate a change impact analysis report. See the documentation for each tool to understand the available features. For more information about the analysis capabilities of FileNet Deployment Manager, see Change impact analysis.
During the backup phase, you suspend activity on the system for the destination environment and create a backup for that system. Before any system modification, it is always prudent to back up the portions of the system that are affected by the changes. For the best possible backup, activity on that system should be temporarily suspended. This best practice allows a consistent snapshot of all related data to be captured.
Before you create a backup in a production environment, validate the backup and recovery process. This validation can detect any data consistency issues and helps to ensure that the backup and recovery processes meet your business needs.
As part of the planning for the backup operation, create a plan to suspend the system with locally defined procedures. Also, create a set of rules to define which personnel can access the system after the suspension and backup. After the system is suspended and backed up, access to the system must be minimized to avoid further changes that would make the system inconsistent with the backup. In the documentation that you create during the planning phase, include information about how the system administrators and FileNet P8 administrators must access the system while it is suspended to complete the necessary application deployment and system configuration tasks.
For more information about backing up a FileNet P8 system, see FileNet P8 domain backup and recovery.
During the deployment phase, the sequence of individual tasks that are required to deploy an application into the destination environment can vary widely. The needs of your organization, the architecture of your system, and requirements of the application itself all determine the number and order of these tasks. The specific plan and procedures for the deployment are created as part of the migration and deployment instructions that you develop during the planning phase.
Deployment can include placing the application the on system as an active application. In some cases, the deployment phase requires both a staging step and commitment step to activate the new application version. In other cases, for example, with a FileNet Deployment Manager deployment, the import process includes both the staging step and the commitment step.
After an application is migrated and deployed, additional system configuration steps might be required. The nature of the deployment and features of the application can determine the need for this additional configuration. For example, when an application is deployed to a system for the first time, one-time-only steps might be required to configure it into the new environment. When an application is redeployed, system configuration information might be overwritten during the redeployment process, resulting in the need to respecify this information. However, most configuration steps should not need to be repeated.
Some of the additional configuration is done directly on the server for the destination system, by using system tools. Other configuration tasks are required for objects in the Content Platform Engine that are migrated as a part of the application package. The migration and deployment documentation that you create in the planning phase would provide the information about the additional configuration that might be needed. Various configuration scenarios in this documentation would supply required information about the first-time deployment of an application or a subsequent redeployment.
For more information about completing deployment tasks with FileNet Deployment Manager, see FileNet P8 asset deployment. For more information about using other tools during the deployment phase, see the documentation for those other tools. For more information about additional configuration tasks that might be required after deployment, see Completing additional system configuration tasks.
During the verification phase, test the deployed application in the destination environment to verify that all of its components are working correctly. The tests that you need to complete vary according to the features and expected behaviors of the deployed application. The migration and deployment instructions that you document during the planning phase should include a plan for verifying the deployment, with specific tests to probe areas of change.
For more information about the tasks that might be required during the verification phase, see Verifying the destination environment.