A File System Receiver (FSR) will need to be installed and configured on each live or test server to receive published static content from the Alfresco Staging Server.
The FSR is a small, standalone server that receives updates from an Alfresco repository running Web Content Management; content is published to a flat filesystem. The published flat files will typically be served by a web server such as Apache, for static content or an application server such as Tomcat, JBoss, or IIS for web applications (WARs, PHP files, and so on).
FSR requires filesystem access and must run as a user with appropriate rights to the target filesystem. The FSR is a standalone Java Daemon (no Tomcat or other app server required) and it has minimal resource requirements. The FSR supports the invocation of custom Java code and/or programs. The refore, it can be used to perform additional tasks post-deployment such as search engine indexing, pushing content to a Content Delivery Network (CDN), or replicating content to other systems or repositories.
The destination file server receiver has to be running with its RMI registry port and service port (44100 and 44101 by default) opened.
If you refer to SourceForge at http://sourceforge.net/projects/alfresco/files/, you will notice three different downloads of FSR. A Microsoft Windows installer file (Alfresco-DeploymentCommunity-3.3-Setup.exe), a Linux installer file (Alfresco-DeploymentCommunity-3.3-Linux-x86-Install) for automatic installation, and a ZIP file (alfresco-community-deployment-3.3.zip) for manual installation. I would prefer using the ZIP file and manually installing the standalone deployment receiver. Both Windows and Linux installers have certain limitations as they do not provide configuring various deployment targets.
Unzip the deployment ZIP file into a convenient location (it does not make its own directory) on a live or test server. Notice a file named deployment.properties, which contains the configuration information. The folder deployment includes default target information.
To configure the filesystem receiver, open the deployment.properties file in the text editor of your choice. Choose locations for each of the following:
; filesystem receiver configuration deployment.filesystem.datadir=D:/07_MUN_WORK/alfresco_book_wcm_32e/deployment-data/depdata deployment.filesystem.logdir=D:/07_MUN_WORK/alfresco_book_wcm_32e/deployment-data/deplog deployment.filesystem.metadatadir=D:/07_MUN_WORK/alfresco_book_wcm_32e/deployment-data/depmetadata deployment.filesystem.autofix=true deployment.filesystem.errorOnOverwrite=false ; Deployment Engine configuration deployment.rmi.port=44100 deployment.rmi.service.port=44101 ; Stand alone deployment server specific properties deployment.user=admin deployment.password=admin
deployment.filesystem.datadir:This is the location in which the filesystem deployment receiver stores deployed files during a deployment, before committing them to their final locations.deployment.filesystem.logdir:This is the location in which the filesystem deployment receiver stores deployment time log data.deployment.filesystem.metadatadir:This is the location in which the filesystem deployment receiver stores metadata about deployed content.deployment.filesystem.autofix:The file system deployment target can either issue an error upon detecting a problem or automatically fix the problem. Theautofixparameter controls whether the File System Deployment Target will attempt to fix the metadata itself or just issue a warning. Set the value to true to fix, or false to not fix.deployment.filesystem.errorOnOverWrite:The file system deployment target can issue an error upon overwriting the files. Set the value to false to overwrite the files, which is needed when updating the existing files.deployment.rmi.port:The port number to use for the RMI registry. Choose this so as not to conflict with any other services. By default, the standalone deployment receiver uses 44100.deployment.rmi.service.port:The port number to use for RMI service. Choose this so as not to conflict with any other services. By default this is 44101.
Note that while specifying the directory locations on Microsoft Windows, either use forward slashes or escape the backslashes. For example, C:/dir1/dir2 or C:\dir1\dir2.
You can configure as many target filesystem receivers as you need on a single live or test server. By default, a single filesystem receiver is defined with simple configuration via deployment.properties.
Deployment targets are placed in the deployment folder with the filename deployment/*target.xml. To define more targets, follow the pattern of deployment/default-target.xml. There are two steps involved:
- Definition of your target information in the
deployment.propertiesfile - Registration of your target with the deployment engine using an XML file
Let's create a deployment target for the CIGNEX website and let's name it as cignex-live1 target. As a first step to configure filesystem receiver, open the deployment.properties file in the text editor of your choice and add the cignex-live1 filesystem target configuration as follows:
; cignex-live1 filesystem target configuration
deployment.filesystem.cignex-live1.metadatadir= ${deployment.filesystem.metadatadir}/cignex-live1
deployment.filesystem.cignex-live1.rootdir=
D:/07_MUN_WORK/alfresco_book_wcm_32e/deployment-data/targets/cignex-live1
deployment.filesystem.cignex-live1.name=cignex-live1
deployment.filesystem.cignex-live1.user=admin
deployment.filesystem.cignex-live1.password=admin
Now to register this new target, you need to create a target XML file in the deployment folder. You can refer to an existing target file, default-target.xml, in the deployment folder for more information.
Copy deployment/default-target.xml as the deployment/cignex-live1-target.xml file. Open the deployment/cignex-live1-target.xml file in your text editor of choice and replace the keyword default with the keyword cignex-live1.
With these simple two steps, you have configured a new target named cignex-live1.
Now that the FSR is configured and running, you can use it from Alfresco staging to deploy the content.
The following are the steps to configure a Web Project to use an FSR.
- Navigate to Company Home | Web Projects | <web project name>.
- Select Edit Web Project Settings from the Action menu.
- Click on Next to reach the Configure Deployment Servers window.
- Click on the Add Deployment Receiver link as shown in the following screenshot. Fill out the form as needed. The minimum required fields to be filled out, assuming default settings, are the Host name where the FSR is located and the Target Name.
Field Name
Description
Type
Live Server or Test Server. You deploy the content from Staging Sandbox to the live server. And you deploy the content from User Sandbox or from workflow to the test server.
Display Name
A descriptive label for the server, used by the UI.
Display Group
The deployment receivers configured using the same Display Group name will be treated as one batch during deployment.
Transport Name
Name of the network protocol connection to the remote filesystem receiver. By default it is RMI.
Host
The host name of the destination server, can be a name or IP address.
Port
The RMI port to connect to on the destination server.
URL
The runtime URL of the destination server. Can be used to preview the deployment, upon a successful deployment.
User Name
The username to use to connect to the destination server.
Password
The password to use to connect to the destination server.
Source Path
The path of the folder to deploy, for example
/ROOT/site1.Excludes
A single regular expression (multiple rules can be defined within the expression) of items to exclude from the deployment, for example
.*.jpg$|.*.gif$.Target Name
The name of a target to deploy to, configured in the FSR.
Include in Auto Deployment
If checked, then this target will be included in auto deployment.
- Click on the Add and Finish buttons to complete the configuration.
The following represents the steps required to deploy content to an FSR. Similar steps are used to deploy content to an ASR.
- Navigate to Company Home | Web Projects | <web project name>.
- Expand Recent Snapshots; it may be required to select the appropriate When value to find a snapshot to deploy.
- Deploy content by clicking on the Deploy icon to the right-hand side of the desired snapshot.
- Select the server(s) to deploy the snapshot to, on the Deploy Snapshot window. Click on OK. This screen will auto refresh to show the success or failure of a deployment.
When the deployment is successful, you will notice that the files from the Alfresco WCM staging environment are copied to the filesystem of the live server where the target location is specified. The following screenshot shows that the files are copied to the folder configured for the target cignex-live1:
Alfresco WCM staging environment captures all of the deployment reports and maintains the complete deployment history for audit trail purpose.
In order to view the deployment report and the history, navigate to Company Home | Web Projects | <web project name> and click on the View Deployments link on the right-hand side top corner of the Staging Sandbox window. You will notice the report similar to the one shown in the following screenshot.
For a specific deployment, you can list the files deployed by clicking on the Details link. You can also see reports for all of the deployments done earlier. Click on any Attempt Date listed in the More Deployment Reports window to view the detailed deployment report:
Snapshots can be reverted, compared to the previous snapshot, and compared to any snapshot by selecting the appropriate actions icon as shown in the following screenshot:
Let's say for some reason there is an issue with snapshot version 4, which is live. You can revert to a previous and stable snapshot version 3. In order to revert to a specific snapshot, click on the Revert icon and select the targets to revert to.
For the deployment Status, there could be four possible values:
- IN PROGRESS: Deployment is occurring on one or more servers
- LIVE: All servers were deployed to successfully
- PARTIAL FAILURE: Deployment failed on one or more servers
- FAILED: Deployment failed on all servers
On a specific receiving server (FSR), you can configure more than one target. For example, you can deploy images to a doc-root of the Apache web server (say target1) and you can also deploy videos to a streaming server (say target2). Similarly, you can install and configure FSR on multiple servers.
To configure multiple deployment receivers, follow the instructions given in this chapter in the Configuring a web project to use FSR section.
In the Add Deployment Receiver form, use the Source Path field to specify a folder for the web project to be deployed. Also use the Excludes field to exclude certain types of files to be deployed.
This section covers a few advanced features that are useful to extend the File System Receiver.
On the target receiving servers, the FSR can be extended by implementing a prepare() or postCommit() callback. The prepare() callback is called after all files have been successfully deployed to the FSR's temporary storage areas before actually copying them to the target location. The postCommit() callback is called after the files are successfully copied to the target location.
These two callbacks allow the developers to implement processing on deployed content through the use of a system command, script, or Java class.
Some examples are:
- Re-indexing of external search engine for newly added content in the filesystem
- Integrating with a third-party system, such as updating a database upon receipt of certain files
- Copying files to an external filesystem via FTP
- Sending e-mail notification upon failure or success of deployment
Refer to the deployment/file-system-target-sample.xml file, which includes prepare and postCommit blocks listed as folows:
<!-- Add your prepare callbacks here --> <property name="prepare"> <list> <bean class="org.alfresco.deployment.SampleRunnable" /> </list> </property> <!-- Add your postCommit callbacks here --> <property name="postCommit"> <list> <bean class="org.alfresco.deployment.SampleRunnable" /> </list> </property>
The data that streams out of Alfresco and into the FSR can be transformed by content transformation. On the Alfresco server, content transformers are defined in the configuration file deployment-service-context.xml. On the File System Receiver, transformers are defined in the configuration file application-context.xml.
Following are a few use cases listed for your reference.
- File compression for slow networks
- Encryption of sensitive data
- Transformation of content as it is deployed
Here is an extract from deployment-service-context.xml showing the configuration of the encryption transformer, which takes two parameters:
<!-- Payload transformers --> <bean id="deploymentEncryptor" class="org.alfresco.deployment.transformers.SampleEncryptionTransformer"> <property name="password"> <value>Alfresco</value> </property> <property name="cipherName"> <value>PBEWithMD5AndDES</value> </property> </bean>
The Alfresco deployment service supports the configuration of multiple transport adapters to enable connection to remote filesystem receivers using different network protocols (that is, encrypted RMI).
Transport adapters are configured on the Alfresco Staging Server in the Spring configuration file deployment-service-context.xml. An instance of the Alfresco server may support many different transports. However, each deployment receiver only exposes a single transport as shown in the following screenshot:
