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Create a Hosted Production State Software Application

Create a Hosted Production State Software Application

Owned by Chad Carson
Last updated: Mar 07, 2025
4 min read

Prerequisite One : Upload a Backup to MCOECN

There are two basic ways to deploy a new production State Software application.

  1. Moving an existing application from local Docker hosting to MCOECN hosting by restoring an existing backup of the Docker application into the new MCOECN hosted application.

  2. Deploying a new blank application to import data into later.

If you are moving an existing application to MCOECN hosting you must upload a backup to the MCOECN that can be seen by Aria Automation, and will be used to deploy the application.  The backup filename must follow a specific naming convention.  Please see this article regarding creating a backup and uploading to MCOECN.

Upload a Local Docker Backup to the MCOECN   

NOTE: If your ITC is hosting locally, but is already sending offsite nightly backups to MCOECN, those backups can be used to deploy a production application.

 

Prerequisite Two : Decide What Domain You Will Use

Decide if you will be using your ITC's own internet domain to host, or the ssdt-ohio.org domain that is provided by the MCOECN. If you wish to use your own domain, please work with the MCOECN Datacenter Operations team to get this set up before you deploy your application into production. Email dco-help@managementcouncil.org to start a ticket for assistance. This article gives you more information about what domain to use for hosting applications:

 

Prerequiste Three : External Authentication to Active Directory

If you plan to use External Authentication to your own ITC's Active Directory, you will need to allow LDAP access from the MCOECN hosted environment to your local Active Directory server(s) through your ITC firewall. 

All LDAP requests from the MCOECN Hosted applications will come from this single source IP address :

208.108.246.14

This only needs to be completed one time per ITC, and will need to be done by the ITC’s technical staff who manage your ITC’s firewall.

 

 

You can run State Software Production for a district as many times as you need to, until you run Mark as Live on that district's applications. 

After that, running State Software Production on that same district's applications will fail....it will not overwrite a district application marked as "LIVE".

Steps to Deploy Production State Software

  1. Log into https://cloud.managementcouncil.org and go to the Service Broker

  2. Run the State Software Production catalog item by clicking Request.

    image-20250307-182214.png

  3. Fill out the form. 

    1. ITC Name will be filled in for you (unless you manage State Software for other ITCs as well, if so, choose the ITC under the Project dropdown).

    2. Choose the district from the District Name drop-down.

    3. Check the boxes next to the application(s) you wish to create.

      image-20250307-182315.png

       

  4. Click the button to run the task.   The State Software Production item will:

    1. Find your backup file by the IRN (naming convention of the backup is very important)

    2. Automatically create new deployments of the selected applications

    3. Will restore your backup(s) into the application(s)

    4. Will email you a notice when the task is complete (takes about 10 minutes per application).

    5. NOTE: Any usernames/password that were used locally will still be in the database after it restores at MCOECN.

  5. OPTIONAL: If you want to deploy an application with a BLANK database to start, check the box, and provide an initial Admin password for the application, so you can get logged in the first time.

    image-20250307-182552.png

     

  6. APPLICATION INTEGRATION: USAS and USPS will automatically integrate with each other in the MCOECN Hosted Environment.  No manually intervention is required to get USAS and USPS integrated.  You do NOT need to create API Keys within the applications if you are using MCOECN hosting (doing so will actually BREAK the integration within the MCOECN hosted Kubernetes environment).   

    If you deploy other applications like Inventory, Workflows or ESS, API keys will be automatically generated and added to the USAS and USPS YAML configuration files.   
    However, you must run the catalog item State Software Maintenance to apply the integration configuration to USAS and USPS (which will restart the applications). 
    This part does not happen automatically.  We leave this as an extra step because we do not want the creation of Workflows, Inventory, or ESS to  restart USAS/USPS outside of ITC Staff control.  We do not want production applications taken down unexpectedly/accidentally during business hours.  Please see the page for  State Software Maintenance for more details. State Software Maintenance

  7. After the application is deployed, take steps to verify that everything looks good (run reports, compare balances, etc). 

  8. When you are ready to "go live",  you will run the Service Broker Mark As Live option to flag each application as "live".   



    This protects the application from being overwritten by running State Software Production over top of it. 
    It also adds the application to the MCOECN Automated nightly backups.


  9. If the district has 3rd-party apps that integrate with SOAP, you may need to update those URLs to your new hosting URL, if you are now using the ssdt-ohio.org domain for hosting your applications.

 

 

 

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