Multiple instance single dashboard

[tom1 (Tom)]

Hi,

With the licencing model we have the ability to create 3 instances of octopus server, is there a way to present the dashboard for all 3 instances in a single view?

If i have a DevTest instance, PreProd instance and Prod instance what is the best way to manage this.
At the moment we have a single instance which covers all environments so we can clear promotion path between all environments such as CI, UAT, PReProd and PRod - how is this done with 3 instances?

Thanks

[paul.calvert]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for getting in touch!

The main purpose of having multiple instances is to allow for testing of Octopus upgrades and environments where dev and production are separated due to network or security restrictions that requires an Octopus Server in each environment.

There isn’t any way for the separate instances to communicate, so, things like shared dashboards and promoting from one instance to another aren’t supported.

Is there a particular use case that is making you consider creating additional instances?

Regards,
Paul

[tom1 (Tom)]

Thanks Paul.

So how do we make use of the licencing?
“Your license key specifies the number of deployment targets you can have per running instance of Octopus. For example, if you are licensed for 50 deployment targets, you may have 50 targets on each of the three instances of Octopus Server that you run (in this example, 150 targets in total).”

Basically we would need to deploy CI/UAT etc from 1 instance where we maybe have 2x as many targets, and then preprod and then for Prod, but the issue is how we get the latest release from UAT into the PreProd instance to deploy and so on? Does that makes sense?

Thanks

[paul.calvert]

We allow the full amount of targets per instance to accommodate companies that want to run Octopus on a test server to validate upgrades or are forced to separate their development and production environments.
The intention isn’t to allow users to have three times as many deployment targets than what they are licensed to.

In this kind of multi-instance configuration, your build pipeline would need to be aware of both instances. If you want the same build to be available on multiple instances then you would need to duplicate the Push Package and Create Release steps so that it is actioned against each instance.
Or you could have different branches pushing to different instances.

You would also need to ensure that any changes made to deployment processes, variables etc are duplicated across each instance.