| Table of Contents |
|---|
Summary
The following instructions detail at an appropriate abstraction how certain qualified (IQ’d) environments are created. These instructions are shared to assist customer validation teams in interpreting the IQ and/or ECR documents provided.
VAL Environment Creation
VAL environments are temporary environments. Except for With the exception of the initial customer onboarding process, they are always created by cloning current PROD instances and obfuscating volunteer data. This creates a ‘point in time’ state of the database as the VAL environment is then turned over to customer use.
These steps are followed by our engineering support team:
Copy the appropriate PROD Main or Test database into a new database schema for the respective VAL instance.
Run an obfuscation process to scrub volunteer Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Further details on this process are here: Obfuscating Volunteer PII
Start up a ClinSpark instance with an appropriate deployment.
Update the configuration system configurations to reflect the new environment name and appropriate configurations for the functionality being tested.
Capture the startup output of the ClinSpark Tomcat process. This output shows the key environment properties such as JVM version, Tomcat version and relevant environment variables.
Export the PDF configuration report from the environment, and attach this to the IQ and/or ECR. This report shows all application configuration and settings.
...
This process is coordinated via service desk tickets. When complete, the engineering team will provide a copy of the IQ and/or ECR document in the ticket, as well as information pertaining to system configuration state when appropriate.
| Note |
|---|
It is critical expected that a fresh VAL environment is made from PROD for every upgrade/release cycle of ClinSpark. Maintaining a persistent instance of VAL and upgrading it that instance skips a key step of the qualification process, which is essentially a ‘dry run’ of the actual upgrade where . During this process, realistic run times can be observed, which supports planning and scheduling and roll-back decision points. |
Limitations
Validation environments
...
are not intended to remain accessible ‘indefinitely’ and are expected to be closed within two weeks following a successful PROD upgrade. IQVIA support teams will engage with customers on the service desk for this purpose to confirm when VAL environments will shut down.
VAL environments are also not capable of having their data ‘refreshed’ from a more recent point in time from PROD. The environments are created at a specific point in time, from when the PROD cloning process takes place. If customers wish to have a
...
more recent set of data from PROD from what is in their current VAL environment, they can request a brand new VAL environment to replace their current environment.