Which is better for deploying new HealthShare environments and incremental updates - %Installer or Ensemble -> Export Production?
This is my first post, I have only been using Healthshare for a year.
We support multiple Healthshare test and development environments. We are trying to come up with the best solution for building an environment from scratch, as well as incremental updates. I am interested in hearing the pros and cons between using the Ensemble -> Export Production feature versus creating custom classes to do the install and setup.
At the moment we have custom classes (one for Access gateway, one for Registry, etc), that installs Healthshare and our custom settings using the %Installer tool. I did not write these, but I have used and updated them when needed. For incremental updates we take a snapshot of the environment (it's Unix if that matters), then import the XML file and then manually update any settings needed. We've had enough of those incremental updates now that I feel like I need to go back and modify the custom setup classes to include these new settings, which is why I am starting to consider other options.
I have been playing around with the Ensemble -> Export Production option in the management portal. I really like that it creates a rollback file, that's a nice feature. My thought is, if I have one environment that has all the things already installed and working, I can export that production to a baseline file. Then when a new project comes along and the developer needs a fresh new environment, I just install that exported baseline file. As incremental updates happen, I install the XML in my baseline environment, configure any new settings, and then update my baseline file with the new stuff to use for any new environment requests that come along in the future. For existing environments, I am not sure if I could install that new baseline file or should just restore the XML and manually adjust any settings like we do now?
I have read through some posts on here and sounds like Export Production has had some bugs. This is the version we are currently running:
Cache for UNIX (Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86-64) 2017.1.3 (Build 317_0_18518U) Tue Oct 16 2018 00:28:11 EDT [HealthShare Modules:Core:15.03.1007 + Linkage Engine:15.03.1007 + Patient Index:15.03.1007 + Clinical Viewer:15.03.1007 + Active Analytics:15.03.1007]
I have also heard that Ensemble tools don't always work well with Healthshare. So I am curious to hear from those with deployment experience, which do you think is the better way to go and why?
Thanks so much!
Grace