Server View and eiConsole Hot Deployment

The eiConsole has the ability to connect to a remote eiPlatform and deploy route changes without requiring a restart. This tutorial will show some of the usages of the eiConsole’s Server View and Hot Deployment functionality.

Enable the Server View panel

Interacting with a remote eiPlatform is done via the Server View panel located on the Route File Management screen, and can be enabled / disabled from the Edit menu, shown below.

Connect to the remote eiPlatform

Make sure Server View is enabled, and select the appropriate tab on the lower half of the Route File Management screen. Click the gear icon highlighted below, and enter the URL and login credentials for the remote eiPlatform in the window that appears.

Note: The Username and Password must be setup in the eiPlatform’s eipServer.conf configuration file to enable remote login and hot deploy functionality. This is done by adding the following settings to the configuration file (a server restart is required afterwards).

VERY IMPORTANT: These credentials grant complete functional access to the eiPlatform’s API, and as such should be sufficiently secure and difficult to guess. The ‘eip’ username used in this tutorial is not sufficient nor recommended for a production eiPlatform server!

• com.pilotfish.eip.dashboard.Username = <Username>
• com.pilotfish.eip.dashboard.Password = <Password>

The API URL required is the host and port where the eiPlatform is listening, usually in the form “http://<HostName>:<Port>/eip/”.

After entering the proper credentials, hit the ‘Connect’ button to establish a remote connection. When successful, the red circle will turn green and the table will populate with the Interfaces and Routes currently running on the remote eiPlatform.

Import Components

Hot deploying components is done via drag-and-drop. Simply select the route or Interface to be deployed from the File Management UI (the top half of the screen), and drag it onto the appropriate interface in the Server View panel.

The components will be automatically imported and activated on the remote eiPlatform. Click the ‘Refresh Server Tree’ button to see the newly imported routes.

Note: Hot deploy can also be used to update existing routes on an eiPlatform. If any routes will be changed or overwritten by a hot deployment, a confirmation window will appear highlighting the components that will be changed.

The hot deploy functionality also works the opposite direction – components from the remote eiPlatform can be imported into the local Working Directory by dragging-and-dropping the opposite way. This makes it easy to download a route that may need updating into the local workspace, make the necessary changes, and then hot deploying it back to the remote eiPlatform all from within the eiConsole.

Other Functionalities

Additionally, there are two buttons used to synchronize the local workspace and remote eiPlatform. This is great for keeping a local copy of an eiPlatform up-to-date and for deploying multiple changes simultaneously while making sure both version stay synced.

The Server View panel can also be used to delete or disable components on the remote eiPlatform. Right-clicking on a route or interface will display options to delete or enable / disable. Any routes that are currently disabled will appear in red.