Re: [Deployment on 24x7]

b_gilmore

Well Known Member
Re: [Deployment on 24x7]

I also am building packages on a nightly basis and deploying to Citrix. We
have the Citrix deployments down to a total of 10 minutes to a 10 server
Citrix farm and fortunately we can afford this downtime (for now).

The easiest way you're going to be able to handle this is to rotate at least 2
Citrix servers out of your published app so that you'll always have something
to deploy the latest packages to and then send back into the farm. I don't
know if you have a low water-mark for the number of concurrent connections,
but that would be the time to make the switch.

Hopefully you have night operators which handle your deployments because what
I'm proposing would likely span a timeframe of about 2 hours.

Let say hypothetically that 10PM is the low-water mark for Citrix connections
(50 concurrent) for the day and that you have 20 servers total in your farm.
If you have 2 servers out of the published app without any connections, your
could kick off the deployments at 9:00PM to get them updated. At 10PM your
operators can then move these 2 updated servers into the published app and
move the other 18 out so no other connections to the published app will be
routed to the 18.

From there, you simply watch the 18 servers over the next 2 hours (or longer)
for servers that decrease in connections through the normal course of users
logging off (or.... wait for it... crashing.. he he.. couldn't help myself).
When a server works its way down to specified number of concurrent connections
(e.g. 5), you then send a message to the remaining 5 users on the server and
politely ask them to log off and back on which will shift them to the 2
updated servers freeing up the servers out of the published app. After all
the connections are cleared, you install the new update packages to the
cleared server and put it back into the published app.
You just repeat this for all 18 servers until they are all back in the farm.

After they're all back in, you can take the original 2 servers back out of the
PA in hopes that by 9:00 PM the next evening these servers will have no
connections on them and you can begin again.

BG


Jgsepulveda <[email protected]> wrote:
Windows 2000 Advance Server 2. SQL Server 2000 SP 2. 3. About 500+ users
around the world, connecting to OW using Citrix, running 24 x 7 4.
Development in progress 5. Full packages build every day (different
pathcodes) 6. Package deployments every day.For the deployment of the
packages, we have one hour where we kick all users off of the system. This
give us the safety to deploy packages clean.Full packages to the Citrix
Servers are taking less than 3 minutes using the Silent Option (Thanks to Tim
Allen for the lead). Deployment to the Enterprise Servers are taking 10
minutes to complete.In general, we are using only 15 minutes for package
deployments every day. This is working very, very good and the project is very
smooth.But, I'm facing more and more pressure from management to deploy
packages without kicking users off of the Citrix Servers.Does anybody knows
which will!
Enterprise Server without kicking users off the system, but only to those
pathcodes not being used. But Citrix server are a different beast.Does anybody
has a good idea to approach this dillema.Thank you all
 
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