Understanding Deploy Mode in Views Other than Service View of Connectivity Services Director

Deploying Configuration Changes

When you make configuration changes in Build mode, the changes are not deployed to devices automatically. You must manually deploy the changes to devices in Deploy mode. Every time you make configuration changes in Build mode that affect a device, the device is automatically added to the list of devices with pending changes. Configuration changes are deployed to devices at the device level. When you deploy configuration changes to a device, all pending configuration changes for that device are deployed.

You can deploy the device configurations in the following two ways:

• Auto Approval—In this mode, the device configuration changes are approved automatically by the system and do not require explicit (manual) approval by a configuration approver before they can be deployed. This is the default approval mode.

• Manual Approval—In this mode, the device configuration changes are required to be explicitly approved by a configuration approver before the changes can be deployed to the device.

  Note

  Manual approval is not supported in Connectivity Services Director.

  For more information about enabling these modes, see Setting Up User and System Preferences.

An operator performs device configurations and creates a change request for that configuration and submits it for approval to an approver. The approvers are notified by e-mail whenever a change request is created. If a configuration or a change to it is approved by an approver, then the operator is able to deploy it. If a configuration is rejected then the operator must make the necessary changes, resubmit the change request, and procure an approval before the configuration can be deployed. For more information, see Approving Change Requests

• Run configuration deployment jobs immediately or schedule them for future times.

• Approve the change requests for pending configurations, if you have selected the Manual Approval mode.

• Preview pending configuration changes before deploying the changes.

• Validate that the pending changes are compatible with the device’s configuration.

• Manage configuration deployment jobs.

Configuration changes are validated for each device both in Connectivity Services Director and on the device. If any part of a configuration change for a device fails validation, no configuration changes are deployed to the device. You can see the results of each validation phase separately.

Connectivity Services Director will not deploy configuration to a device with a configuration that is out of sync (meaning that the device’s configuration differs from Connectivity Services Director’s version of that device’s configuration), or to a device that has uncommitted changes to its candidate configuration. Deployment to such devices will fail.

When you schedule a deployment job, that job and any profiles and devices assigned to that job are locked within Connectivity Services Director. You cannot edit the job or any of its assigned profiles until the job runs or gets cancelled. This locking feature prevents you from deploying unintended configuration changes that could result from editing profiles and devices that are already scheduled to deploy. To change any properties of a scheduled job, cancel the job and create a new scheduled job with the desired properties. You cannot edit the profile assignments of a device that has scheduled pending configuration changes.

Managing Software Images

Connectivity Services Director can manage software images on the nodes it manages. You can do the following software image management tasks:

• Deploy a software image stored in an image repository on the Connectivity Services Director server to multiple devices with a single job.

• Track the status of software image management jobs.

• Stage and install software images as separate tasks.

• Schedule staging and installation to happen at independent future times.

• Perform several software image upgrade options, such as rebooting devices automatically after the upgrade finishes.

Managing Devices

In Deploy mode you can perform several device management tasks, including:

• View the device inventory.

• Show a device’s current configuration.

• Resynchronize the device configuration maintained in Build mode with the configuration on the device. For more information about resynchronization of device configuration, see Understanding Resynchronization of Device Configuration

Managing Device Configuration Files

You can back up device configuration files to the Connectivity Services Director server. You can perform several actions on backed up configuration files, such as restoring configuration files to devices, and viewing and comparing configuration files.

Managing Baseline Configuration

You can baseline device configuration and the OS version to the Connectivity Services Director server. You can perform several actions on baseline configuration files, such as restoring configuration files to devices, and viewing and comparing configuration files.