Uploading Prod replicated inventory files to UAT using the built in uploader

[bmaudlin]

Hey Guys, 👋

I hope everyone is well. 

I am looking to solve a puzzle I am currently facing, as part of the new file replication feature in the 17.x and later of the Flexera beacon software. I am looking to automate the upload of inventory files into our UAT instance so we are able to test new releases in greater depth.

My proposal, was to use the built in uploader with a separate scheduled task from the main inventory uploader. 

So I was going to set the scheduled task up say once every once a week with the following parameters, similar to as follows >

 '-f C:\local\datareplication\*.* -o uploadLocation=//localhosts/ManageSoftRL/Inventories -o Logfile=C:\local\myuploaderlogfile.log -o TenantUID=AsPerTenant'

However I seem to face an error, any thoughts to what I am doing incorrectly here please? 

Ben

[kclausen]

I would recommend that you have a dedicated Beacon connected to your UAT environment.

Then, from your Production beacon(s), copy the replicated NDI files to a shared network folder.

On your UAT Beacon, copy the NDI files from the shared network folder and simply copy them into the folder named C:\ProgramData\Flexera Software\Incoming\Inventories

The scheduled task on your UAT beacon will upload these NDI files automatically to your UAT environment.

You will need to set up an additional process to clean out the shared folder after copying files down to the UAT beacon so that you don't keep uploading the same set of NDI files over and over again.

[darren_haehnel]

The process @kclausen suggested is what we use.  We shared the replication folder on our prod server and run a scheduled task on our non-prod beacon servers that picks up the files and copies them to the local ...\Incoming\Inventories folder (one beacon per environment).  The script executes once per day and selects the newest XX files from the directory.  We only pull a small number of files in Dev and quite a bit more in Test.  I didn't want to include everything but you could choose to pull all the files created since your last script execution.

[bmaudlin]

Hi @kclausen & @darren_haehnel .

Thanks guys for your responses, is there any reason why typically the inbuilt uploader is not used as I thought that would be the easiest way to copy the files across. 

I will have a search for some scripts to see what is available for me 🙂 

[kclausen]

@bmaudlin - Honestly, I have never had a reason to use the Uploader as a stand-alone utility.  Just let it run and do its thing through the Scheduled Tasks.  If I need to force an upload, I just manually "Run" the corresponding Scheduled Task.

[bmaudlin]

Hi @kclausen. 

Understood - I guess as part of the new replication facility as part of the later releases of the beacon software I was expecting a simple way to copy the necessary files over to our UAT instance. 

[mag00_75]

We use the ndupload for special network segments to upload the NDI's with only 80/443 open.
The thing that goes wrong in your statement is that you are trying to use SMB instead of HTTP.

A powershell script example

 $ErrorActionPrecdference="SilentlyContinue"

$ndupload = ${env:ProgramFiles(x86)}+'\Managesoft\Uploader\NDupload.exe'

$inventoryfiles='C:\local\datareplication\*.ndi.gz'

$beaconserver='http://beaconserver/ManagesoftRL/Inventories'

$logfile='C:\local\myuploaderlogfile.log'

& $ndupload -f "$inventoryfiles" -o UploadLocation="$beaconserver" -o LogFile="$logfile" -o SourceRemove=true