WSO2 Update Channels
If you are in love with Technology and like to read, search and share posts on latest trends in Information Technology, you would probably have heard of The Forrester Wave™ reports, released on Q4 2018.
Forrester Research Inc. has named WSO2 — the only fully open source solution in the report — as a leader in “The Forrester Wave™: API Management Solutions, Q4 2018”. This is one of the best achievements we (WSO2) received in recent past and the gratitude of this glory goes to each and every one who contributes on crafting WSO2 products.
That being said now lets looks at how WSO2 provide updates to their products. Since all WSO2 product updates are released under EULA2 license a user should possess a valid subscription in order to receive and keep already received product updates from WSO2. If you are just evaluating WSO2 products or does not have a WSO2 subscription yet, you can create a 15 day free trial subscription right away by signing up at WSO2 and enjoy all the benefits that a WSO2 subscription customer receives for a period of 15 days.
So once you possess a valid WSO2 subscription you will be able to access WSO2 updates and WSO2 Update Manager(WUM) in order to receive continuous WSO2 product updates.
From the release of WUM 3.0.0, WSO2 provide product updates based on set of update channels. An ordinary subscription user or a free trial user automatically get entitled to both the full and security update channels by default and are eligible receive and keep updates received from above channels within their subscription/trail period. The definition of above mentioned full and security update channels are as follows,
- full :- contain both regular and security updates delivered for a WSO2 product.
- security :- contains only security updates delivered for a WSO2 product.
In above, regular updates contain bug fixes, improvements and new features while the security updates contains only the fixes made for security vulnerabilities.
It is also important to note that the security update channel is only available for the latest released two versions of each product distributions (last two GA versions) at any point in time. For example at the time of writing, wso2is-5.7.0 is the latest released GA of WSO2 Identity Server and the security update channels were available only for the following two GA versions of the WSO2 Identity Server.
- wso2is-5.7.0
- wso2is-5.6.0
Other than the above mentioned channels a dedicate channel (custom channel) can also be obtained for a subscription which will deliver content (bug fixes, improvements, new features and fixes for security vulnerabilities) based on the user’s requirement. A custom channel is useful in a scenario like follows,
Lets assume that organizationABC using WSO2 API Manager 2.6.0 for managing their APIs and they have thoroughly tested all their use cases and scenarios with wso2am-2.6.0(GA or GA + updates up to certain timestamp)in pre-prod (staging) environments and gone production with a stable setup. As their production setup is stable and all their use cases works perfectly fine, there is no requirement for organizationABC to update their production environment regularly with updates delivered from WSO2 Update Manager. However, organizationABC might needs all the fixes for security vulnerabilities identified when time passes and organizationABC might also need selective bug fixes, improvements and new features introduced via the full update channel.
In a scenario like above having a custom channel is best bet for organizationABC as dedicated WSO2 updates can be received via the customer specific custom channel according their requirements. In case there is a requirement for your organization as mentioned above please contact the Account Manager assigned for your account in-order to be onboard on a specific custom channel for your organization.
That being said, lets try out updating wso2am-2.6.0 using WSO2 Update Manager(WUM) in full, security and in a custom update channel step by step. For the sake of continuity of the above example, lets assume a user danieal@organizationABC.com from organizationABC.com tries to receive updates from above update channels and the name of the custom specific channel to be orginzationABC.
- Download OS specific WUM 3.0.2 client from WSO2 Update Manager(WUM).
- Add extracted wum executable to the OS PATH variable (needs only to be perform in Linux OSs).
- Open up a terminal (cmd in Windows) and initialize wum by executing the following. Please provide valid credentials for your WSO2 account when prompted.
~ wum init
You need a WSO2 subscription to start using WUM.
Don't have one yet? Sign up for a free-trial subscription at https://wso2.com/subscription/free-trialPlease enter your WSO2 credentials to continue
Email: danieal@organizationABC.com
Password for 'danieal@organizationABC.com':
Authenticating...
Done!
Setting default channel full...-- Welcome to WUM 3.0.2 --* Please contact WSO2 for further information at https://wso2.com/contactWhat's next? Have a look at the following list of WUM commands:Add WSO2 products to your product repository
wum search Search WSO2 products
wum add Add or download WSO2 productsUpdate WSO2 products available in your product repository
wum check-update Check for new updates
wum update Update your WSO2 products
wum diff Create a diff between two updated distributionsManage WSO2 products available in your product repository
wum list List WSO2 products
wum describe Show details of WSO2 products
wum delete Delete WSO2 productsRun "wum [command] --help" for more information about a command.
(Note the log of `Setting default channel full…` in above)
4. Add wso2am-2.6.0 by executing the following command.
~ wum add wso2am-2.6.0Upon completing above wso2am-2.6.0 will get added to your wum home (~/.wum3/products) and you will be able to verify it by executing the following command in terminal(cmd in Windows).
~ wum list
Product Updated Filename Channel
wso2am-2.6.0 - wso2am-2.6.0.zip - What's next?
run "wum describe [product-pattern]" to get more details of products
Now lets update wso2am-2.6.0 from different update channels :) .
- full update channel
~ wum update wso2am-2.6.0As the default channel is set to full the above will automatically fetch updates from the full channel.
- security update channel
~ wum update wso2am-2.6.0 security- orginzationABC custom update channel
~ wum update wso2am-2.6.0 orginzationABCUpon performing above execute wum list command to verify wso2am-2.6.0 distributions updated from different update channels as follows.
~ wum list
Product Updated Filename Channel
wso2am-2.6.0 2019-03-14T10:51:33+05:30 wso2am-2.6.0+1551808453039.security.zip security
wso2am-2.6.0 2019-03-14T10:46:30+05:30 wso2am-2.6.0+1552411265381.full.zip full
wso2am-2.6.0 2019-03-14T10:28:48+05:30 wso2am-2.6.0+1541808853040.orginzationABC.zip orginzationABC
wso2am-2.6.0 - wso2am-2.6.0.zip -
What's next?
run "wum describe [product-pattern]" to get more details of productsUpdated wso2am-2.6.0 distributions will be arranged at wum home (~/.wum3/products) in the following hierarchy
~/.wum3/products tree -L 4
.
└── wso2am
└── 2.6.0
├── full
│ └── wso2am-2.6.0+1552411265381.full.zip
├── security
│ └── wso2am-2.6.0+1551808453039.security.zip
├── orginzationABC
│ └── wso2am-2.6.0+1541808853040.orginzationABC.zip
└── wso2am-2.6.0.zipPlease refer wum command guide for more details on available wum commands.
Cheers !!!!
