Understanding Product and Fix Repositories

The Software AG Software Download Center (SDC) hosts repositories that contain all Software AG products. The Empower Product Support website hosts repositories that contain all Software AG fixes. On the Command Central that has Internet access, you define a connection from the local Platform Manager to these repositories. This connection enables you to install products and fixes directly from Empower on target installation machines.

The connection also enables you to create mirror repositories from the repositories on Empower. These mirror repositories reside in your file system and contain the Software AG products or fixes you choose. From these mirror repositories you can install products and fixes on target installation machines in distant locations or in environments that do not have Internet access. On the Command Central that has Internet access, you create mirror repositories that serve as the primary source of products and fixes you have licensed, and store those primary mirror repositories locally. From Command Centrals without Internet access, you connect to the Command Central that has Internet access and create secondary mirror repositories from the primary mirror repositories. You store the secondary mirror repositories as follows:

If the Command Central machine without Internet access is physically near the target installation machines, you store the repositories on that Command Central machine.

If the target installation machines are in a distant location, you can improve performance by storing the repositories on a machine that is physically near the target installation machines.

From any Command Central, you can connect to mirror repositories that are managed by another Command Central to install products and fixes. For example, you might want to connect from a Command Central in a production environment to a Command Central in a test environment to re-use product and fix binaries that have been tested and are ready for production. Mirror repositories are always hosted on Platform Manager.

You can refresh an existing mirror repository whenever new products or fixes become available in the source repositories. You can also specify different source repositories from which to populate a mirror repository.

If a Command Central without Internet access cannot connect to the Command Central that has internet access, you use image repositories to install products and fixes. An image repository is an image file you create from a secondary mirror repository using a Command Central command, from a product installation image you create using Software AG Installer, or from a fix installation image you create using Software AG Update Manager, and then upload to Command Central. For example, if your production environment has no Internet access, you would create an image repository in your test environment, upload it to the Command Central in the production environment, create a mirror repository using the image repository as source, and then install from the mirror repository. You can then delete the image repository.

Note:
When you must use image repositories, Software AG strongly recommends creating mirror repositories from image repositories and installing from the mirror repositories. The use of mirror repositories greatly reduces transfer times and improves performance.

The following diagram displays how to Command Central connects to the Software AG repositories and how to use the different types of repositories in a network with intranet access and no internet access and in a network with no internet and intranet access. To watch a video that provides a detailed description of the diagram, click https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nks1KF1vKIU.