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IceGrid 3.3 removing distribution with application?

After upgrading to 3.3.0 we've noticed that the IceGrid distribution is deleted by the IceGrid node after the associated application is removed. (the entire 'distrib' directory becomes empty).

Is this the expected behavior? This didn't happen in 3.2.1 with identical config files and I haven't found any mention of the change. Is there a way to prevent this from happening?

thanks,
alex

Comments

  • benoit
    benoit Rennes, France
    Hi Alex,

    Yes, the IceGrid node in 3.3 now removes the application distribution directory if there's no more servers from the application deployed on the node. There's currently no way to prevent this. Could you detail why you'd prefer the distribution directory to not be removed?

    Cheers,
    Benoit.
  • Hi Benoit,

    We've been using the patch facility as a permanent way to distribute binaries to the remote hosts from a central server.

    The patch process is time consuming (>100MB to multiple hosts over a slow wireless link). But it needs to be done much less frequently than adding/removing the application.

    In theory we could keep the application permanently added (and use 'update' when necessary). But in practice, we tend to remove/add it quite often: for technical and psychological reasons, there's something comforting about the system being completely 'OFF' when not in use :)

    I can see how the new behavior makes some sense because it's *application's* distribution and maybe it shouldn't persist beyond the life of the app. But from our usage point of view a simple configuration option for the purging policy would be much appreciated.

    thanks,
    alex
  • benoit
    benoit Rennes, France
    Instead of removing the application, why don't you stop and disable all the servers from the application? Once the servers are disabled, you can be sure they won't be started again on-demand.

    Eventually, we could add "application stop/start/disable/enable" commands to the IceGrid Admin facility to do this at the application level.

    Another option would be to create an independent application with a distribution containing the data to distribute on each node (this would require to add a "dummy" server to each node though to ensure that the application distribution data is copied onto the nodes).

    Cheers,
    Benoit.
  • thanks Benoit,
    I'll play with different options.
    alex