Preface
This book, Helix Versioning Engine Administrator Guide: Multi-Site Deployment (previously titled Distributing Perforce), is a guide intended for administrators responsible for installing, configuring, and maintaining multiple interconnected or replicated Perforce services. Administrators of sites that require only one instance of the Perforce service will likely find the Helix Versioning Engine Administrator Guide: Fundamentals sufficient.
This guide assumes familiarity with the material in the Helix Versioning Engine Administrator Guide: Fundamentals.
About this manual
This manual includes the following chapters:
Chapter |
Contents |
---|---|
Describes the different types of Perforce servers and explains how you combine these to solve usability and performance issues. In addition, this chapter discusses the issues that affect service federation independently of the particular type of service used: issues like user authentication and communication among federated services. Subsequent chapters in this book describe each type of service in detail. |
|
Explains how you work with server replicates to provide warm standby servers, to reduce load and downtime on the primary server, to provide support for build farms, or to forward write requests to a central server. |
|
Describes commit-edge architecture, which addresses the needs of geographically distributed work groups and offers significant performance advantages. Explains how you set up a commit-edge configuration, how you migrate from an existing installation, how you manage this configuration, how you use commit/edge triggers, and how you plan for disaster recovery. |
|
Explains how yo use the Perforce broker to implement local policies in your Perforce environment by redirecting server requests and by mediating between the client and other servers in your federated environment. Provides information about how you install, configure, and run the broker. |
|
Explains how you use a Perforce proxy to improve performance in a federated environment. Describes how you install and configure the proxy and how you use it to maximize performance. |
|
Provides reference information about the syntax and options of the p4d command used to create and configure a Perforce server. |
What's new in this guide for the 2015.2 update
This section provides a list of changes to this guide for the Perforce Server 2015.2 update release. For a list of all new functionality and major bug fixes in Perforce Server 2015.2, see the Perforce Server 2015.2 Release Notes.
Major changes
- New
server.global.client.views
configurable -
Allows client view maps to be made global under certain conditions. See Setting global client views for more information.
Updates and corrections
- p4 verify command
-
The
-t
option may now be used on replicas that havelbr.replication=cache
.Use the
-S
option to determine whether your shelved archives have been lost or damaged. - Promote shelves
-
Use the new
-p
option for the p4 unload command to promote any non-promoted shelves belonging to the specified client that is being unloaded. The shelf is promoted to the commit server where it can be accessed by other edge servers.You may unshelve a promoted shelf into open files and branches on a server from where the shelf did not originate.
- Use a client on an edge server as a template for a client on other edge servers
-
See Creating a client from a template for more information.
- You may not use p4 resubmit and p4 unsubmit commands from on edge server
-
You may only use these commands on a commit server.
- Lock and unlock files
-
New command options allow you to lock files globally and to unlock orphaned files. For more information, see Locking and unlocking files.
- For clients bound to edge servers: additional checks to prevent inadvertent deletion of clients or changelists
-
The p4 client and p4 change commands now require that you specify additional information to prevent the accidental deletion of a client or changelist belonging to a client bound to an edge server. See Managing distributed installations for more information.
Setting the
rpl.compress
configurable allows you to compress journal record data that is transmitted using p4 pull. - You can compress journal record data during pull
-
Setting the
rpl.compress
configurable allows you to compress journal record data that is transmitted using p4 pull. - You can get more information about pull threads
-
If you are running a replica with monitoring enabled and you have not configured the monitor table to be disk-resident, you can get more precise information about what pull threads are doing. See The p4 pull command for more information.
- You can batch files for a pull operation
-
Use the new
--batch
option to the p4 pull command to specify the number of files a pull thread should process in a single request. The default value of1
is usually adequate. For high-latency configurations, a larger value might improve archive transfer speed for large numbers of small files. (Use of this option requires that both master and replica be at version 2015.2 or higher.) - Display information about replicas for untagged output
-
The p4 info command displays information about replicas and service fields for untagged output as well as tagged output.
Helix documentation
The following table lists and describes key documents for Helix users, developers, and administrators. For complete information see the following:
http://www.perforce.com/documentation
For specific information about… |
See this documentation… |
---|---|
Introduction to version control concepts and workflows; Helix architecture, and related products. |
|
Using the command-line interface to perform software version management, working with Helix streams, jobs, reporting, scripting, and more. |
|
Basic workflows using the P4V, the cross-platform Helix desktop client. |
|
Working with personal and shared servers and understanding the distributed versioning features of the Helix Versioning engine. |
|
p4 command line (reference). |
P4 Command Reference, p4 help |
Installing and administering the Helix versioning engine, including user management, and security settings. |
|
Installing and configuring Helix servers (proxies, replicas, and edge servers) in a distributed environment. |
Helix Versioning Engine Administrator Guide: Multi-site Deployment |
Installing and administering a Helix server cluster for high performance and automated failover. |
Helix Versioning Engine Administrator Guide: Cluster Management |
Helix plug-ins and integrations. |
IDEs: Using IDE Plug-ins Defect trackers: Defect Tracking Gateway Guide Others: online help from the Perforce menu or web site |
Developing custom Helix applications using the Helix C/C++ API. |
|
Working with Helix in Ruby, Perl, Python, and PHP. |
Syntax conventions
Helix documentation uses the following syntax conventions to describe command line syntax.
Notation |
Meaning |
---|---|
|
Monospace font indicates a word or other notation that must be used in the command exactly as shown. |
|
Italics indicate a parameter for which you must supply specific
information. For example, for a
|
[ |
Square brackets indicate that the enclosed elements are optional. Omit the brackets when you compose the command. Elements that are not bracketed are required. |
… |
Ellipses (…) indicate that the preceding element can be repeated as often as needed. |
|
A vertical bar ( | ) indicates that either
|
Please give us feedback
We are interested in receiving opinions on this manual from our users. In
particular, we'd like to hear from users who have never used Perforce
before. Does this guide teach the topic well? Please let us know what you
think; we can be reached at [email protected]
.
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.