We’re pleased to announce the availability of DataPower Buddy 3.3.
New Tasks/Commands and Notable New Feature
- Support for encrypted properties and configuration settings. This can be used for encrypting DataPower account passwords. It can also be used for encrypting any sensitive data inside DataPower configuration/export files or inside any files that are copied to DataPower using DPBuddy’s copy command.
- PasswordAlias task/command to create DataPower password aliases. The password can be stored encrypted.
- New format for configuration settings and properties/variables based on the open-source HOCON (Human-Optimized Config Object Notation) library. HOCON is a less restrictive JSON superset geared towards defining configuration settings. HOCON allows for comments, it does not require string quotes, it supports variable substitution and includes. For more details please refer to HOCON documentation. HOCON provides many benefits over the property/prefix-based format introduced in earlier DPBuddy releases. The properties format, however, is still fully supported, migration to HOCON is completely optional.
- Support for DataPower firmware 7.5
- Secure restore task/command. The command performs restoration of a secure backup and optionally waits for the completion of the secure restore process. This command can be used for automated sync of multiple appliances in production or for managing disaster recovery appliances.
- Restore task/command. This command restores multiple domains (or all of the domains in an appliance) form the backup taken by the backup command. This command can also be used for appliance syncing and for DR.
- RestartDP task/command. This command restarts the appliance and optionally waits for the completion of the restart process.
- License command that prints DPBuddy’s license information.
Configuration Transformation-Related Changes
- Support for repeaters (loops). Repeaters allow for generating XML fragments in a loop based on an array or an object defined in a HOCON configuration file. For example, you may need to change the definition of a Load Balancer Group depending on the target environment (each environment can have a different number of LBG members). You can define your LBG members in the configuration file and then apply “update” action with “repeat” attribute.
- “if” expressions are now supported at the “transform” container level (previously “if” was only supported at the action level).
- “verbose” setting is now supported at the “transform” container and at the individual transformation action levels.
- Improved logging of transformed element names.
- Support for local Ant properties in Groovy expressions.
- “antProject” is now part of the scope in all Groovy expressions.
- Passwords are now automatically masked in all transformation logs (including verbose mode).
Changes to Existing Tasks/Commands
- Import, copy and restore commands now stream files to DataPower, which speeds up file transfer and allows for supporting large files. Previously, DPBuddy loaded files in memory prior to import/copy.
- Export task/command now supports sorting of the exported XML configuration file. DPBuddy will sort all DataPower configuration objects alphabetically according to their names and types. This feature can be used to make tracking of DataPower configuration changes easier since DataPower sometimes re-orders objects in the exported configuration.
- Import task/command can now re-run import automatically in case of import errors. This feature should be enabled when importing the sorted configuration file created by the export command. DataPower requires configuration objects to be defined prior to being referenced at import. With the sorted export file, this is no longer the case, hence the import may need to be run twice.
- Export command now automatically removes “export-manifest” from the exported xml files (can be controlled by the “defaultTransorm” option).
- Import now supports “failOnError” option/attribute.
- More efficient mkdir task/command — a directory tree is now created in a single request.
- assertState now prints error code/error description for objects in the “down” state.
- Improved CLI help.
- For DPBuddy CLI, config files can now reside in “/etc” directory.
To upgrade to this release, you can simply download and un-archive the distribution and point your DPBUDDY_HOME environment variable to the new location. If you’re using DPBuddy from Apache Ant, you will also need to add <pathelement location=”${dpbuddy.home}/conf”/> to the DPBuddy library’s “taskdef” in your Ant files, otherwise, you will see verbose logging output in the console.
You can download DPBuddy 3.3 from this page.