HP Device Manager 4.5 - Repository Management

Executive summary
Before HP Device Manager (HPDM) 4.5, it was difficult for users to associate a payload with templates. It was difficult to
manage multiple Child Repositories and synchronize content between repositories. Also, it was risky to remove contents
from repositories. An administrator had to spend much time maintaining repositories and their contents to make tasks
succeed.
Now, in HPDM 4.5, a new mechanism called “Automated Repository Management” has been implemented to improve the
efficiency of HPDM and ensure the consistency of resources in all repositories through automated synchronization.
A repository is a file server that stores payloads used in HPDM tasks, like software components, system images, tools and
agent files. There can be multiple repositories in an HPDM set up. One of them contains the master copy of the payloads and
is called the Master Repository. The other repositories replicate the contents of the Master Repository and are called Child
Repositories.
The following tasks need to transfer payloads through repositories:
• Agent
– _Update Agent
• File and Registry
– _File and Registry > Capture Files, Deploy Files
• Settings
– _Apply Easy Tools Configurations
– _Apply Easy Tools Settings
• Imaging
– _Capture Image
– _Deploy Image
– _PXE Capture
– _PXE Deploy
HPDM Agents before version 4.5 cannot execute these tasks except for _Update Agent, because these HPDM Agents have
no Automated Repository Management mechanism. _Update Agent is an exception because it was handled specially.
Mechanism
On the Master Repository, a component named the Master Repository Controller is installed. The Master Repository
Controller manages the content in the Master Repository and synchronizes that content to the Child Repositories as
requested by the HPDM Server. The HPDM Server works with the HPDM Master Repository Controller to prepare the payload
for tasks.
The overall structure of the Automated Repository Management feature is shown in the following diagram.
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