Micro Focus Virtual Universe Q&A – GroupWise

Q: What's the advantage to containerization?

A: Assuming your question is around the benefits of containerization as it relates to Docker...as we've explored it as we begin transitioning to a containerized micro-services architecture here's a few benefits we've identified:

1. The ability to more rapidly provide updates. Because the architecture is decomposed and there are good contracts between the containers you have the ability to update one container but not others as long as the contracts aren't broken. This would allow us to update pieces of the application much more rapidly to provide additional capabilities or address issues.
2. Because of the former, customers should also be able to take some updates to some containers but leave others alone. This gives you the flexibility to update what you want when you need them. Obviously if contracts between containers change you might need to update some where dependencies exist.
3. Elasticity and scale. The ability to support Docker Swarm or Kubernetes to orchestrate the elasticity of the solution. So for instance on ZENworks, in the future if we noticed that Inventory processing was taking to much time, then the system might be able to spin up additional inventory storer dockers to increase that.
4. Separation of configuration/data and the service. Because the data/configuration is stored outside of the docker, the containers are stateless. This allows you to update the software by simply replacing the old container with the new container and then have the new container read the existing configuration/data. Also plays into elasticity and the containers can be spun up and spun down as needed.
5. Speed of update. Typically we've seen it is much faster to update containers than traditional installers.
6. Because there's a base distro in the container you can pretty much run the container anywhere that the docker is supported. For instance I am running my GroupWise web client docker instance on my Synology NAS device instead of having to have a fully blown Linux server. With docker hosting available in the cloud or on-prem it gives great flexibility in your deployment.

Those are a few of the early ones we've found. There will probably be others as we make our transition.

Q: Where is the GroupWise plugin for Filr?

A: There is not a plugin for Filr.  Filr integrates into GW by setting it up inside the Administration Console so there is no need for a plugin.  To set up the integration, click on the Client Options button on the properties of a domain, post office, or user object.  Click on Integrations and fill out the information for the Filr server.

Q: Android Updates?

A: Unfortunately at this time the Android platform doesn't provide a way to do this. This is primarily because the Android patches come from the various vendors, not from Google directly so the method would end up being different for each. There is a policy that allows you to control when Android devices will apply their updates, but that is it currently.

Q: Copy of presentation (Introduction to The New GroupWise Web).