ARTIFACTORY: How to set up a Federated repository for the first time

What is a Federated repository:

A Federated repository is a type of repository in Artifactory, similar to a local repository, that can sync across multiple instances. With the Federated repositories, we can maintain the same files across multiple instances, hence developers can deploy/download from any instance.

How can we use Federated repositories:

1. We can set up Federated repositories across multiple instances and regions. Multiple teams across the globe can deploy the artifacts, and these can be synced across all the instances, and teams/users in the other region can download from those region-specific instances.
    
2. We can setup Federated repository between the production (PROD) instance and the disaster recovery (DR) instance, where we can setup load balancer and switch the traffic to the DR instance when the PROD instance is down, so that the users can deploy continuously to the DR instance without any interruption. Once the PROD is back online, all the files deployed to the DR will be synced back to the PROD, and then we can switch the traffic back to the PROD instance.

Prerequisites:

This feature is supported with Enterprise X and Enterprise+ licenses/subscriptions with Artifactory versions 7.18.3 or later. 

Note: Federated repository is not supported on the Artifactory Edge instance. Hence, for the Edge instance, we need to set up smart repositories to pull from source, or we need to set up Distribution on the source to distribute the release bundle to Edge.

RTFS: 

Before Artifactory 7.104, Federated repositories were part of the Artifactory microservice. From Artifactory 7.104 version, Federated repositories were handled by a new separate microservice called Artifactory Federation service [RTFS]. This new microservice has benefits like scalability, resource separation, monitoring, etc. 

The Artifactory Federation Service requires:

• Artifactory 7.104 or later.
• RTFS is not supported for native installations below version 7.111.
• PostgreSQL 13 or later. Support for other databases is under consideration.

Even though we support the new RTFS service from Artifactory 7.104 version or later, as a best practice, we recommend its implementation from Artifactory 7.117.5 version and above due to a breaking change in context path. 

We can still use Federated repositories with legacy implementation without enabling the RTFS, and it will continue to work. Later, we can migrate to the RTFS from the legacy implementation. However, please keep in mind that the legacy Federated repositories running in the Artifactory service will be sunsetted in July 2027. Older releases will continue to be supported based on JFrog standard support policies.

Implementation:

For Enterprise X Cloud subscription: 
Kindly reach out to JFrog support and request the creation of a circle of trust between two Enterprise X SaaS instances. 

For Enterprise+ Cloud Environment:
The Mission control and RTFS are already enabled on the Enterprise + subscription mothership instance. 

For Self hosted environment:
Make sure both instances have a custom base URL configured. Once a Federated repository is created, changing the custom base URL will be a tedious and time-consuming task. Hence, finalize the instance DNS and set the custom base URL before creating a Federated repository.

We can set a custom base URL in UI > Administration > General Management > Settings.

 

Mission Control is an Artifactory Service: Mission Control was integrated into JFrog Artifactory as a microservice. We need to enable Mission control on any one of the instances, which we consider as mothership instances. It will handle all the deployments from a single instance. To enable the Mission Control in the Artifactory instance, you need to add the following values in the system.yaml file [located under the $JFROG_HOME/artifactory/var/etc].

mc:
    enabled: true

After adding the above values in the system.yaml file, restart Artifactory for the change to apply.

Steps for setting up Federated repositories [Enterprise X cloud subscription]

Step 1: Creation of a Federated repository

Create a new Federated repository or convert the existing local repository into a Federated repository. If we decide to convert a local repository on one instance, then we need to convert the local repository in all the instances to a Federated repository if it exists. If the repository is not available on the other instances, then we need to manually create the new repository on the other instances before adding the member in the next step.


 
 

Step 2: Adding the members as URL

Once the repository is created, navigate to the Federated repository and add the members as a URL.

 


Steps for Setting up Federated Repositories [Enterprise+ Cloud and Enterprise X/+ Self-hosted]

Step1: Registering the JPD
We need to register the member JPD instance. In Artifactory UI, navigate to Administration > JPD services > New platform deployment. 

 

Get the pairing token from the member instance, and use that to add the deployment in the mothership instance.

 

After registering the deployment, if there are any warning messages in the Platform deployment UI, we need to fix them before going forward.

 

Step 2: Create bindings between the instances.
To create bindings between instances, we need to navigate to Administration > Deployment Bindings > Add Binding > Federated repository.

 

Choose all the instances that we need to federate and click on the create button.

  

Step 3: creation of a Federated repository

Create a new Federated repository or convert the existing local repository into a Federated repository. If we decide to convert a local repository on one instance, then we need to convert the local repository in all the instances to a Federated repository if it exists. If the repository is not available on the other instance then we can use [create new “repository_name”] option while adding members in the next step.

 

 


Step 4: Adding the members to a repository
To add members to the newly created repository, navigate to the repository settings> federation tab, choose the deployment and repository.

 

Conclusion:

Deploy an artifact in a Federated repository in any of the instances and see the magic of the same artifact appearing in other instances. This concludes the federated repository setup and its validation.