Niagara provisioning is available only to a Supervisor station. It provides automation of various tasks to remote (JACE) hosts in the station’s NiagaraNetwork. For the most part, these are platform tasks—that is, otherwise done using (full) Workbench, making individual platform connections directly to remote JACE hosts, then using the appropriate platform views.
Additionally, “provisioning robot” tasks are available. This allows running custom program code in the station running on each JACE host (executed by those stations’ ProgramService). It is important to note that the Supervisor station does all these tasks, modeled in the station as provisioning jobs.
Outside of provisioning, you must perform similar tasks using (full) Workbench, either by:
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Making individual platform connections directly to remote JACE hosts, then using the appropriate platform views.
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Making individual tunneled platform connections to remote JACE hosts, then using the appropriate platform views (platform tunneling available starting in AX-3.5).
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Or in the case of “provisioning robots”, by opening station connections and then copying and executing Program objects.
For details about the platform user interface, see “Platform overview” in the NiagaraAX Platform Guide.
Provisioning provides some advantages over “individual” platform (or station) connections, for example:
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When provisioning, you need only one station connection—to the Supervisor, and no other connections (platform or otherwise).
This means you can do provisioning from anywhere you can open the Supervisor station...even using Web Workbench! (ordinary platform tasks cannot be done using Web Workbench.)
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Provisioning allows the same series of tasks (executed as the job’s steps), to be executed to any number of target JACE hosts. Most job steps execute sequentially on one host, then are repeated on the next host, until all specified hosts are done—or, just to a single JACE, if specified. This ability is useful when performing the same tasks with multiple JACEs, such as a job-wide software upgrade, or a periodic backup of all hosts’ station configurations.
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You can build a provisioning job to run immediately, using the job builder view of the NiagaraNetwork’s ProvisioningNwExt, as well as use the BackupSchedule slot of the ProvisioningNwExt to specify a regular, repeating schedule backup for all stations. Or, you can use “job prototype” components copied from the provisioningNiagara palette and pasted in the station. Any job prototype can be linked to a TriggerSchedule, and can also be run immediately.
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By default, provisioning provides persistent storage of all jobs on the Supervisor, including all statistics associated each job and step (creating user, begin and end job times, step details, log output, and so on). In the case of station backups, any saved .dist file can also be restored directly from its batch job step log— via a “Restore” function, whereby it is executed as another provisioning job.
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Provisioning tasks in the Supervisor station can be done in three different ways:
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From the ProvisioningNwExt, under the Supervisor’s NiagaraNetwork component, described next—see About the ProvisioningNwExt.
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From individual job components. See job prototype.
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From NiagaraStation provisioning (device) extensions, under each station modeled in Drivers, NiagaraNetwork. See Provisioning Station Extension Concepts.
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