The Environment Migration Wizard tool greatly facilitates the promotion of multiple components of your APM environment. The items it supports include customizations, security profiles, event assemblies, etc. Below I will give you an example of transferring only the customizations from one environment to another. My usual approach is to have 3 environments Development, Test (or QA) and Production. Then I would create the package in Development and apply it to Test. We would then go through test scripts in Test to ensure no important process gets broken. If any of the test scripts fail I would resolve the issue in Development, recreate the package, reapply to Test and go through the test scripts again. Once the test scripts pass I will use that package for the final promotion to Production.

 

Promoting Custom Modelling from one environment to another

 

The Environment Migration Wizard is included as part of the full software install of APM. You may find it in the Start Menu after APM has been installed.

 

The Environment Migration Wizard supports two processes and guides you through the steps. The first is to create a package file. This file may include multiple different kinds of data. I am going to take you through the simple case of transferring Customizations (modelling data including configurations).

 

Please note that you should run the Environment Migration Wizard on the servers. It is probably not included in the distributed Thick Client anyway, but keep this process on the servers.

 

1.	This part of the process must be done with everyone out of Development and all the APM services for Development shutdown.
2.	On the Development server run the Environment Migration Wizard.
3.	Choose the option to “Create a new package”
4.	Then give the Package a suitable name and if you wish add some Comments. Click Next.
5.	Now select an instance that you wish to use as the Source for the package. In your case, you will choose a Development instance. Click Next.
6.	Now you may choose what transports you want to include in the package. We are simply going to pick Transfer Customizations and then click “Add >>”. This transport only affects the database so we only need to apply it once when we apply it to Production. Other transports include files that affect the software installation and in those cases we would need to apply the package to both the application and the integration servers in Production. Click Next.
7.	On the next screen I always leave the defaults and simply click Next.
8.	Finally, you will reach the step when you may create the package itself. I would suggest that you save this packaging project as you will be able to re-use it in the future. After saving the project click “Create Package”.
9.	You will be asked where to save the package. I would suggest creating a folder for the packages (and the projects) so you always know where to go to find them. I usually would add the date into the file name. Click Save
10.	Saving the package will complete in a minute or two and you will be informed when it is complete. Click OK, and then click Close.

 

That completes the first process of creating a package file. Now we need to apply this to Production.

 

1.	This part of the process must be done with everyone out of the target environment and all the APM services for that environment shutdown.
2.	Backup the database
3.	Copy the package file to one of the servers supporting the target environment and launch the Environment Migration Wizard on that server.
4.	This time choose the option to “Apply a package to a target environment”
5.	Choose the file you created in Development and click Open.
6.	You will be presented with information the Wizard finds in the file. You should review the information to make sure it is what you expect. Click Next.
7.	Now you must choose the Target instance you want to apply this package to. You may choose any of the Production instances. Click Next.
8.	As our example only affects the database then the next step does not apply. You will be asked if you want to create a backup directory. This is for the case where your package includes files that affect the software installation. Click Next.
9.	Now you will be presented with information of what the Wizard is about to do. Please review and then click “Apply Package”.
10.	Once this is complete I would launch a Thick Client to make sure the process runs, and then restart all the APM services.