PingOne Advanced Identity Cloud

Introduction to self-service promotions

PingOne Advanced Identity Cloud lets you run self-service promotions to move static configuration between a sequential pair of tenant environments, either from the development environment to the staging environment (staging promotion), or from the staging environment to the production environment (production promotion).

Non-sequential promotions (between the development environment and the production environment) are not supported.

If you promote configuration that accidentally causes instability or errors, Advanced Identity Cloud lets you run a self-service rollback to restore an upper environment to its previous configuration.

You can run a promotion or a rollback using the following options:

The Advanced Identity Cloud configuration model

The following video summarizes the concepts of the Advanced Identity Cloud configuration model:

Lower and upper environments

The environments in a sequential pair of environments are referred to as the lower environment (the configuration source), and the upper environment (the configuration destination); the terms lower environment and upper environment therefore refer to different environments, depending on which environment you are promoting to.

Standard promotion group of environments

For a standard promotion group of development, staging, and production tenant environments, the lower and upper environments are:

Development
environment		 Staging
environment		 Production
environment

Staging promotion

output lower

input upper

Production promotion

output lower

input upper

Key:

  • output lower = lower environment (configuration source)

  • input upper = upper environment (configuration destination)

Additional UAT environments

If you also have a UAT[1] environment in your promotion group of environments, it is inserted into the promotion process between the development and staging environments:

  • If you add one UAT environment, the revised lower and upper environments are:

    Development
    environment    		 UAT
    environment    		 Staging
    environment    		 Production
    environment

    UAT promotion

    output lower

    input upper

    Staging promotion

    output lower

    input upper

    Production promotion

    output lower

    input upper

  • If you add two UAT environments, the revised lower and upper environments are:

    Development
    environment    		 UAT
    environment    		 UAT2
    environment    		 Staging
    environment    		 Production
    environment

    UAT promotion

    output lower

    input upper

    UAT2 promotion

    output lower

    input upper

    Staging promotion

    output lower

    input upper

    Production promotion

    output lower

    input upper

Environment locking

Locking an environment prevents configuration changes that could disrupt a promotion or a rollback; however, all authentication flows continue to work as normal.

Before you run a promotion or a rollback, you must lock the lower and upper environments. This prevents anyone else from locking either of those environments, which ensures only one promotion or rollback can be run at the same time in the same set of development, staging, and production environments.

Locking the lower and upper environments also blocks access to the ESV API in those environments. This prevents anyone else from accidentally disrupting a promotion or rollback by manipulating ESV configuration values. If the lower environment is also the development environment, then most Advanced Identity Cloud API endpoints are also restricted.

When a promotion or a rollback is complete, you must unlock the lower and upper environments to return the environments back to full functionality.

Configuration integrity checks

When you run a promotion or a rollback, Advanced Identity Cloud performs integrity checks on your static configuration to protect the stability of the upper environment.

Integrity check for missing ESVs

Promotion Rollback

Checked?

Yes

Yes

This integrity check looks for ESVs referenced in your static configuration, but not set in the upper environment.

Advanced Identity Cloud runs this integrity check on the whole configuration, not just configuration changes.

Integrity check for encrypted secrets

Promotion Rollback

Checked?

Yes

No

This integrity check looks for encrypted secrets embedded directly in your static configuration. It is best practice to store encrypted secrets in an ESV secret and update your configuration to reference the ESV secret instead.

Advanced Identity Cloud runs this integrity check on the whole configuration, not just configuration changes.