Introduction

Overview

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ACE consists of several components, distributed over a number of nodes in the network. The image above shows the most elaborate situation, consisting of five nodes, each running their part of some functionality of ACE.

The system has the following nodes,

• Client A client system has functionality for altering the configuration of the deployment process.
• Server The server contains all necessary metadata to allow provisioning, and acts as a hub for logging information.
• Relay A relay server keeps a copy of the metadata of the server, and can provide a target with all functionality a 'regular' server can. Note that this allows for offline provisioning, and note that there can be a chain of relay servers.
• Target The target is the system to which software is to be provisioned.
• OBR The OBR contains the actual software to be provisioned.

The nodes together have the following components,

• Deployment See below.
• Logging See below.
• Identification Each target needs a unique name; the Identification components provide this functionality.
• Discovery Targets and relays need to find the next server 'upstream' from the current node.
• Configuration ACE uses its own configuration mechanism, which works by reading configuration files, and putting that information into Config Admin.
• Scheduling Some components needs to have scheduled actions to allow logging and provisioning; the Scheduling component helps with that.

Given this information, it might also be useful to compare this with the Software Architecture.

Alternative topologies

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The three topologies below are just examples; you can take (almost) any component, and drop it somewhere in your network, all components are intended to be distributed.

Single server

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In the case of a single server, the OBR and the required server components are deployed on one system, and all target nodes connect to that one. This is the scenario that Getting Started with the File Based Server uses.

Offline

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This scenario can be used in the case of a service engineer who takes his laptop to a machine to be serviced. Assuming that these devices do not have internet connectivity (for cost- or security reasons), the engineer loads up his laptop with the most recent situation from the server (this will happen automatically), and later connect it to the machine. The machine will get its new software, and upload its logs to the service laptop; the logs will later be synced back to the server.

Firewalled

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In this scenario, the administration is done on the 'big bad internet', but the server on the internet only contains metadata. The actual code is located in the OBR's behind the firewall; here, we also see the distribution possiblitiesTODO show the possible topologies: single server and gateway, separate OBR, several relays, where does the client fit in, etc.

Provisioning

Software provisioning is the main task of ACE. The provisioning components are responsible for determining the set of bundles to be deployed to a given target, creating a deployment package, and feeding the deployment package to the Deployment Admin.

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