Learn how to administer the product.
Learn about performing administrative tasks for a DevOps Code ClearCase® community including managing software licenses, user and group accounts, ClearCase server and client hosts, shared data, and the network that connects them.
Because VOBs are the principal repository for artifacts under DevOps Code ClearCase® control, VOB administration is one of the DevOps Code ClearCase administrator’s most important tasks.
To make a VOB inaccessible, lock it or remove its tag.
Most DevOps Code ClearCase® applications and commands (cleartool commands, for example, or GUIs such as the ClearTeam Explorer) require a license to run. DevOps Code ClearCase can use IBM Common Licensing, which is based on the FLEXlm license management tool from GLOBEtrotter Software, Inc., or ClearCase Licensing, a proprietary licensing scheme.
When you change the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) for DevOps Code ClearCase®, you must reconfigure the product to make it work with the new JRE.
The DevOps Code ClearCase® registry is a central repository of information about shared resources such as VOBs and views.
A DevOps Code ClearCase® environment that includes hosts that run Windows and hosts that run the UNIX system or Linux is said to be a mixed environment.
As an administrator, you are responsible for the security of your DevOps Code ClearCase® deployment.
DevOps Code ClearCase® supports a rich set of access controls on versioned objects.
VOB data must be accessed through a view. Most VOB metadata can be accessed directly by using DevOps Code ClearCase® GUIs and cleartool commands.
All VOBs have the same on-disk directory structure, and all have similar administrative requirements. However, certain VOBs might perform special functions.
When enabled, atomic checkin operations allow VOB users to specify that if a checkin operation should fail for one element specified by the checkin command, then it is to fail for all elements specified by the command.
"Evil twins" are two elements of the same name that have been created in different versions of the same directory element. When the directory versions are merged, it is not clear which twin has been lost, nor even that the twins may be different versions that need to be merged.
Each VOB has a database schema version that defines the format of the VOB database and therefore determines the types of data and metadata that the VOB can store.
A VOB feature level is an integer that enables certain features in a release.
Properly configured VOB hosts are essential to obtaining satisfactory DevOps Code ClearCase® performance.
Any user with access to a suitable server host can create a VOB.
DevOps Code ClearCase® supports automounting Versioned Object Bases (VOBs). This feature is relevant to users of ClearCase dynamic views only. VOB automounting can be configured on Linux, Solaris, and AIX systems only.
When you locate VOB storage on a NAS device, you can easily replace the VOB host for any VOB on the NAS device with another VOB host of the same architecture without actually moving the VOB storage.
Several common problems can prevent access to VOBs.
Locking a VOB prevents it from being modified.
Removing a VOB’s tag makes the VOB inaccessible to all types of views (dynamic, snapshot, and Web).
Removing a VOB destroys all of its data. Do not remove a VOB unless the data that it contains is no longer valuable.
This topic describes the contents of a VOB storage directory. An understanding of these contents can be useful to anyone responsible for VOB storage maintenance.
VOB storage grows in proportion to the number of developers who use the VOB and the rate at which they create and change artifacts in it.
After you have created a VOB, you can create as many additional storage pools as you need and adjust their contents as necessary. On hosts running Linux or the UNIX system, you can also create remote storage pools.
There are many types of VOB metadata. Some are unique to a particular VOB, but many must be managed consistently across a group of VOBs that store related artifacts (components of a UCM project, for example). These topics introduce VOB metadata and describe how to use administrative VOB hierarchies to simplify sharing of type objects among related VOBs.
DevOps Code ClearCase® includes tools for moving data and metadata to another VOB and for moving entire VOBs to another disk or host. You may need to use these tools to reorganize VOB directories, redistribute data storage, or rebalance server loads.
A view provides a workspace where users access versions of file and directory elements that are under DevOps Code ClearCase® control. Views can also contain view-private file system objects (such as ordinary files and directories) that are not under DevOps Code ClearCase control.
Like all databases, VOBs, views, and the DevOps Code ClearCase® registry have special backup and restore requirements.
If you have implemented a sound backup strategy for DevOps Code ClearCase® data, it should be easy to restore that data, if necessary.
Periodic attention to storage management and repository integrity is an important administrative function. These topics describe VOB and view storage management tasks, the checkvob utility, and the DevOps Code ClearCase® scheduler, which you can use to automate many periodic maintenance chores.
DevOps Code ClearCase® includes several utilities for importing data from other configuration management systems or directly from the file system itself.
These topics cover a variety of procedures that administrators might need to follow to find and fix problems.
You can configure a DevOps Code ClearCase® host running Linux® or the UNIX system to support access to VOBs and dynamic views from computers that do not run DevOps Code ClearCase.
If you can estimate the number of elements, versions, and derived objects that a VOB will ultimately contain, you can compute a very rough estimate of the size of a VOB that can accommodate them. VOB storage includes a database and pools. On Windows®, the database and pools must reside on a single disk partition. On Linux® or the UNIX system, the pools can be located on a different partition or host, using symbolic links.
DevOps Code ClearCase® supports integrations with task providers such as Rational® ClearQuest®, Rational Team Concert (RTC), and Atlassian Jira through the Change Management Interface (CMI).
Learn how to perform DevOps Code ClearCase® administrative tasks on supported platforms.
Learn to configure and manage the DevOps Code ClearCase® MultiSite and Rational® ClearQuest® MultiSite environments to support development activities at different locations.