How to replicate Targets outside of a Differential- or Complete Replication using an stand-alone replication rule

Products

• IT Management Suite

Issue/Introduction

Use Case:

You are trying to speed up the Target Replication process on your environment because your patching cycles are very short and you can't wait for the replication process to finish a differential or a complete replication. You are modifying your Targets constantly during your patching cycles. 

NOTE:
Targets are usually replicated during a differential or complete replication. If a policy or task or something has the modified target assigned, when that policy/task/etc. is replicated (usually with "Replicate Now"), that target goes with it as well.

You are usually adding new machines to your master target on the parent SMP but you want to make sure that the target is replicated right away with those changes.

Question:

Do we have a way to just replicate targets without running a differential, complete or Replicate Now replication?

Environment

ITMS 8.1, 8.5, 8.6, 8.7

Resolution

To make required items, resource replication faster instead of using differential or complete replications, you can create stand-alone replication rule, include the required resource targets and via mouse right-click menu on this stand-alone replication rule -> Run or add a schedule to it if you prefer.

Steps (to be done on the Parent SMP):

1. Under the SMP Console, go to Settings>Notification Server>Hierarchy

2. Under Hierarchy and Replication>Replication>Items, right-click>New>Item Replication Rule

3. Then, on the main frame, under Items section, click on "None selected"

4. On the "Select Items" window,  under "Available Items>Group", select "Default Targets Folder" and then the desired Targets

5. After the desired Targets have been selected, then under "Destination", you can select all your child SMPs or just a specific one if you want.

6. For credentials, if you are using a different one than the Application Credentials, add it. If not, let them as "Use application credentials".

7. Then, you have the option to "Replicate All (All selected items are replicated whether they have changed or not.)" or "Replicate If Changed (Selected items replicate if a difference in item properties is found.)". By default the rule will replicate if there is a change when the replication rule runs.

8. For a schedule, you can add one if you want (Just remember, running replication too frequently can be too much if other replications are running at the same time) or just use the Right-Click>Run.

9. All information about how stand-alone replication went, can be checked on "Jobs Management" page 

Note:

FYI, as a test, we used a custom resource target which is built using custom filter, custom org view/group. During stand-alone replication of such resource target, it will automatically replicate folder, filter(s), org groups which are set in this resource target