Outside of provisioning, you would have to perform similar tasks on each station using (full)
Workbench and one of the following methods:
- Making individual platform connections directly to remote hosts, then using the appropriate platform views.
- Making individual tunneled platform connections to remote hosts, then using the appropriate platform views.
- 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 the Niagara Platform Guide.
Provisioning provides these advantages over individual platform (or station) connections:
- When provisioning, you need only one station connection—to the
Supervisor, and no other connections (platform or otherwise). This means that you can run a provisioning job from any location where
you can open the
Supervisor station. Even using Web
Workbench (ordinary platform tasks cannot be done using Web
Workbench).
- Provisioning allows the same series of tasks (executed as job steps), to be run on any number of target hosts. Job steps execute
sequentially on a single host. Provisioning is useful when performing the same tasks on multiple stations, such as when implementing
a company-wide software upgrade, or a periodic backup of all hosts’ station configurations. Starting in
Niagara 4.7, it is possible to execute these jobs in parallel across stations. The minimum parallel job count depends on the
Supervisor's hardware architecture (tied to the number of CPU cores of the host machine). The maximum parallel job count is 10. A specific
value can be changed by setting the
Max Provisioning Threads property on the BatchJobService component.
- By default, provisioning provides persistent storage of all jobs on the
Supervisor, including all statistics associated with 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, which executes it as another provisioning job.
There are two types of provisioning jobs.
- The first is a job intended to be run only once, usually immediately. You build this type of provisioning job using the Niagara Network Job Builder, which is the default view accessed by double-clicking the NiagaraNetwork’s ProvisioningNwExt component.
- The second type of job is one that is intended to be run on a regular basis, called a prototype job. This is the type of job
you would set up to back up all station configuration data. A prototype job is linked to a TriggerSchedule, which specifies when it runs. A prototype job can also be run immediately.
In addition to setting up and running provisioning jobs, provisioning (device) extensions in each station require configuration
as well as provide additional provisioning services, under each station modeled in .