Table of Contents
INI
tpm Methodstpm, or the Tungsten Package Manager, is a complete configuration, installation and deployment tool for Tungsten Cluster. It includes some utility commands to simplify those and other processes. In order to provide a stable system, all configuration changes must be completed using tpm. tpm makes use of ssh enabled communication and the sudo support as required by the Appendix B, Prerequisites.
tpm can operate in two different ways when performing a deployment:
tpm staging configuration — a tpm configuration is created by defining the command-line arguments that define the deployment type, structure and any additional parameters. tpm then installs all the software on all the required hosts by using ssh to distribute Tungsten Cluster and the configuration, and optionally automatically starts the services on each host. tpm manages the entire deployment, configuration and upgrade procedure.
tpm INI
configuration — tpm uses an
INI file to configure the service on
the local host. The INI file must be
create on each host that will run Tungsten Cluster. tpm
only manages the services on the local host; in a multi-host deployment,
upgrades, updates, and configuration must be handled separately on each
host.
For a more detailed comparison of the two systems, see
Section 10.1, “Comparing Staging and INI
tpm Methods”.
During the staging-based configuration, installation and deployment, the tpm tool works as follows:
tpm creates a local configuration file that contains the basic configuration information required by tpm. This configuration declares the basic parameters, such as the list of hosts, topology requirements, username and password information. These parameters describe top-level information, which tpm translates into more detailed configuration according to the topology and other settings.
Within staging-based configuration, each host is accessed (using ssh), and various checks are performed, for example, checking database configuration, whether certain system parameters match required limits, and that the environment is suitable for running Tungsten Cluster.
During an installation or upgrade, tpm copies the current distribution to each remote host.
The core configuration file is then used to translate a number of template files within the configuration of each component of the system into the configuration properties files used by Tunsten. The configuration information is shared on every configured host within the service; this ensures that in the event of a host failure, the configuration can be recovered.
The components of Tungsten Cluster are then started (installation) or restarted according to the configuration options.
Where possible, these steps are conducted in parallel to speed up the process and limit the interruption to services and operations.
This method of operation ensures:
Active configurations and properties are not updated until validation is completed. This prevents a running installation from being affected by an incompatible or potentially dangerous change to the configuration.
Enables changes to be made to the staging configuration before the configuration is deployed.
Services are not stopped/restarted unnecessarily.
During an upgrade or update, the time required to reconfigure and restart is kept to a minimum.
Because of this safe approach to performing configuration, downtime is minimized, and the configuration is always based on files that are separate from, and independent of, the live configuration.
tpm always creates the active configuration from the combination of the template files and parameters given to tpm. This means that changes to the underlying property files within the configuration are overwritten by tpm when the service is configured or updated.
In addition to the commands that tpm supports for the installation and configuration, the command also supports a number of other utility and information modes, for example, the fetch command retrieves existing configuration information to your staging, while query returns information about an active configuration.
Using tpm is divided up between the commands that define the operation the command will perform, which are covered in Section 10.5, “tpm Commands”; configuration options, which determine the parameters that configure individual services, which are detailed in Section 10.8, “tpm Configuration Options”; and the options that alter the way tpm operates, covered in Section 10.3, “tpm Staging Configuration”.