Configuration environments

Configuration environments allow centralized management of the configuration of multiple similar IAM instances. 

Configuration environments vs. configuration variables

Some use cases of the configuration variables feature overlap with applications of the Configuration environments feature.

  • The main difference between the two features are:
  • Using the configuration environment feature, environment-specific values for all environments are stored in the IAM configuration file medusa-configuration.xml. The environment-specific values, therefore, need to be known at configuration time.
  • Values are assigned to configuration variables at start-up time during configuration activation and do not have to be known at configuration time. Moreover, they are not stored in the IAM configuration file medusa-configuration.xml.

Enabling configuration environments

In instance.properties the iam.environment.id parameter defines the identifier of the instance's environment (further referred to as the instance environment). The identifier may contain any character, but leading and trailing white space will be removed.

It is also possible to set the configuration environment ID through the "IAM_ENVIRONMENT_ID" process environment variable.

Environment ID definition in instance configuration:

## The configuration environment identifier of this instance. (e.g. Production)
## By default the configuration environments feature is disabled. Defining this property enables the configuration environment feature.
iam.environment.id = Production

Example values:

  • Dev1
  • ProdHA
  • Customer XYZ Stage Production
  • BankAProd

If an instance does NOT define an environment ID the environment feature is disabled and any configuration containing environments can not be activated.

After defining the environment ID, configurations containing environment-specific values can be deployed to the instance.

Be careful when disabling the feature (removing/commenting out the property  iam.enironment.id). When the medusa-configuration.xml contains environments and the instance has the feature disabled the configuration can NOT be activated. Meaning the activation on start-up could fail if the feature was previously disabled.