Infrastructure

Purpose

The Infrastructure page in the Admin Console displays all the Appian environments in your organization and lets you control how those environments interact with each other. For example, you can let developers in your development environment compare and directly deploy application changes to their test environment.

Access

To access the Infrastructure page, go to the Admin Console. Then, in the left navigation menu, under DevOps, click Infrastructure.

Settings

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Environments

The section displays all connected environments, their name, URL, direct deployment status, and connection status. You can also select an environment to view the last action, modifier, and modified date.

System administrators can enable and disable the connection with each environment. Both environments must have their connections enabled to leverage infrastructure capabilities, such as compare and deploy. If either environment disables their connection, all infrastructure capabilities between the two environments are disabled. For example, the dev environment must be added to the infrastructure of the test environment and vice versa for the connection to be fully enabled.

Icon	Connection Status
	Enabled: this is the only status where infrastructure capabilities can be leveraged
	Disabled by remote environment
	Disabled by current environment
	Disabled by both environments
	Connection error with connection enabled by current environment
	Connection error with connection disabled by current environment

Managing environments

To add an environment:

1. Click Add New Environment and enter the URL for a remote environment.
2. Click Send Request. A request will be sent to the environment system administrator and a notification about the request will display on the Infrastructure page.

Outgoing connection requests can be withdrawn at any time. Once the request is sent, system administrators will receive an email that links them to the Infrastructure page. They can view the incoming connection requests and take action on them. Incoming connection requests will time out after 7 days if no action is taken on them.

To allow connection from Appian:

1. Select the environment and select Allow connection from [environment name].
2. Click Save Changes.

To enable direct deployments from Appian:

1. Select the environment and select Enable direct deployments from [environment name].
2. Configure your direct deployment options in the Direct Deployments section.
3. Click Save Changes.

When enabled, this environment will receive deployment requests from the selected environment in this infrastructure. A deployment can include object, database, and plug-in changes, which will be tracked in the Deploy view on both environments. Appian recommends configuring which specific environments can deploy to higher environments, such as Production. For example, you should allow application administrators in the Test environment to deploy to Production. But you wouldn't necessarily allow application administrators in the Development environment to deploy to Production. Disabling direct deployments will block direct deployments without affecting the ability to monitor performance metrics or compare applications.

Removing an environment from the current infrastructure will remove the environment from the remote environment's infrastructure as well.

To remove an environment:

1. Select the environment and click Delete.
2. Click Remove.

Using mutual authentication or self-signed certificates

If your environment leverages mutual authentication or self-signed certificates, you will need to upload your current environment's SSL certificate to each of its connected environments. In addition, you'll also need to ensure that your current environment has the SSL certificate from each of its connected environments. To do this, upload the trusted server certificates in the Admin Console. For troubleshooting information, refer to the Knowledge Base.

External deployments

There are two types of external deployments: incoming and outgoing, both of which use APIs to programmatically complete deployment tasks and orchestrate Appian deployments via an external system.

You can configure the following options for external deployments:

Option	Action
Enable incoming	Select to allow users to leverage native Appian APIs to deploy to the current environment. When disabled, any calls to the corresponding endpoints will fail with an HTTP 403 status code, indicating that the environment is not accepting deployments via these APIs.
Enable outgoing	Select to allow users to leverage native Appian APIs to export from the current environment. When disabled, any calls to the corresponding endpoints will fail with an HTTP 403 status code, indicating that the environment is not accepting deployments via these APIs.
Authenticate As	Select a system administrator user in the service account role to execute the API request and authenticate with its associated API key (configured in Web API Authentication). You can create and manage the API key and service account for authenticating external deployment requests from the Web API Authentication page.
Admin Console Changes	Select Allow deployments with admin console settings to allow this environment to receive admin console setting changes through external deployments.

Deployment settings

This section displays settings that apply to incoming direct and external deployments from all environments that have been added to the current environment's infrastructure.

You can configure the following deployment settings:

Setting	Action
Deploy As	If you enabled direct or external deployments from other environments, select a system administrator user in the service account role to act as the deployer. This user will appear as user who last modified all objects in the deployment.
Plug-in Changes	Select Allow deployments with plug-ins to allow the current environment to receive plug-in changes through direct and external deployments.
Database Changes	Select Allow deployments with database scripts to allow the current environment to receive database changes through direct and external deployments.
Governance	Select Require review and specify a reviewer group to add deployment approval for your deployment process. Users in the reviewer group, system administrators, and application administrators can approve or reject deployments. Select Requester and reviewer must be different to prevent the deployment requester from approving or rejecting the deployment.

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