Plastic Cloud extension

Welcome to Plastic Cloud - the Plastic SCM hosted solution.

The purpose of this guide is to help you get up to speed with the Plastic Cloud extension and its key concepts.

This guide serves as a walkthrough to get your Plastic repositories up and running in the cloud.

Plastic Cloud is the hosted Plastic SCM server solution.

We have two different Cloud products:

Plastic SCM Enterprise Edition plus Cloud extension

For teams who require an on-premises server (included in Enterprise Edition) and host repositories on the Cloud.
Requirements: Purchase Enterprise Edition and add the Cloud extension (not Cloud Edition).
This guide documents this version of Plastic Cloud.

Plastic Cloud Edition

This is a different product designed for teams that do not need an on-premises server. The only central location is the Cloud.
Team members can have local clones of the repositories or work directly connected to the Cloud.
Requirements: Purchase Cloud Edition (not Enterprise + Cloud).

You will work with Plastic Cloud just as you do with a conventional Plastic SCM server; you will push and pull branches, create repositories, manage permissions, and so on.

Internally, Plastic Cloud uses a fully redesigned Plastic server core. The cloud core runs on several cloud roles instead of just a single computer. This means that it can be horizontally scaled by simply adding more roles (computers).

Plastic Cloud is a multi-tenant and highly scalable solution capable of handling thousands of different organizations. It makes the best possible use of the underlying cloud infrastructure.

In practice, this means you don't have to worry about server setup or maintenance. We'll handle that for you!

This guide will explain how the Cloud extension works.

There are many scenarios where the Plastic Cloud extension fits. To mention a few:

• You are a small team and don't want to handle any infrastructure. You're already running Plastic on your laptops, but you don't want to install and administer your own Plastic server. However, you still need a central rendezvous point for the team. Plastic Cloud extension is for you.
• You are part of a large corporate team working in several locations across the globe. You need a central server, but don't want to depend on your IT group. You could set up a Plastic Cloud organization for you and use it as your hosted central server.
• You are a game development team (or any other team dealing with large repositories and huge files). You couldn't find a suitable solution with mainstream hosting providers of version control software. Git-based solutions have the well-known 2GB repos limit. If you need more than that, Plastic Cloud is for you.

These are just 3 key scenarios, but there are many more. Some teams asked us to use the Plastic Cloud extension as a live cloud-based backup, and that's certainly an option.

Once you have your Enterprise Edition license, to start working with the Plastic Cloud extension, you must create an organization.

The organization is the way to handle different sets of repositories in the cloud. Inside the organization, you can create as many repositories as you need.

This is how you can create an organization:

1. Go to your plasticscm.com Cloud dashboard to add the Plastic Cloud extension.

   Or, go to plasticscm.com/cloud and click the Subscribe now! button.

2. Enter your subscription, account information, and the following data related to the organization:
   • Organization name - this is the way to identify your repos in the cloud... so choose a cool name.
   • Datacenter - select the data center that is closest to you to improve data transfer speed.
3. The organization will generate, and we'll let you know.
4. You're signed in to the Plastic Cloud.

Let's see how to access your cloud server.

1. Go to the Plastic GUI and open up the Cloud view. You'll see something like this:
   
2. Type organization_name@cloud as the server name. For example, the organization is test. So it would be test@cloud.
3. Then, click (refresh) (or press the enter key) to access your organization.
4. You'll be prompted to enter the credentials to access the cloud server:
   

   Enter the credentials you used to register at www.plasticscm.com when you purchased your Enterprise Edition license.

   Note: If you choose to remember the credentials for the next time, then a connection profile is created. This way, you won't longer have to enter the credentials.
5. The list of available repositories is empty because you haven't created any repositories in the cloud yet, but you're connected!
6. To create a repository:
   
7. The repo list will refresh, this time showing your first cloud repository:
   

From here on, you will be able to work with this cloud repository normally.

Pushing a branch to the cloud is as simple as pushing it to a regular Plastic SCM server. In this example:

And, my main branch is ready in the cloud!

Whenever you can use a server name, you can use organization_name@cloud. This means that:

• You can do something like cm repo list test@cloud from the CLI to list available repos.
• You can create sync views from your local server to your cloud organization.
• You can list repos from the GUI and open up its Branch Explorer remotely.
• You can annotate a file remotely on the cloud server.
• And much more!

It is possible to work with your Cloud repository directly.

You only have to create a workspace connected to your Cloud repository:

This chapter explains how to access Plastic Cloud from Gluon, the Plastic SCM version specifically designed for artists and content creators.

Since you selected Plastic Gluon to start after the installation finishes, Gluon will start.

Because Gluon doesn't detect any previous Plastic SCM configuration, it will need to be configured:

• Server - The name of your organization followed by @cloud. You will have received an email with the organization that you've been invited to join or the one you've purchased. In this example, test@cloud, since test is the name of the organization.
  You can click Connect to verify that you can correctly connect to your cloud organization.
• Credentials - The email and password you use to log into plasticscm.com.
  You can click Check to verify that you entered the right credentials.
• Repository - Click Choose... to select the project (repository) that you want to work on. All the repositories in your organization are listed.
• Workspace - The path of the workspace on your computer to host the files you'll be downloading from the cloud.

And you're done! Click Apply to start using Gluon.

Once you configure Gluon, you will see your recently created workspace:

Initially, your workspace will be empty because you haven't downloaded any files from the Cloud yet.

Click Configure to browse your project (repository) and select what you want to download to your disk to start working on it.

In this case, a couple of files are selected. However, you can choose to download the entire directory tree or just parts of it:

Then, click Apply, and the download will start.

As explained previously, to access a Plastic Cloud repository, use the combination organization_name@cloud as the server name.

A regular local repo in your machine is named repo@local.

At Plastic Cloud, this repo is named repo@organization_name@cloud.

The @cloud part is just a shortcut to tell Plastic to connect to Plastic Cloud. You can do something like this:

And, as you can see, fantasywarrior3d@cloud is equivalent to fantasywarrior3d@cloud.plasticscm.com.

Once you get the confirmation that your organization is ready, you'll be able to access your Cloud dashboard by logging into https://www.plasticscm.com/dashboard/cloud.

Once you log in, you will see the organizations management area. There aren't many options at this point, so you'll see it is effortless to use.

All you see is a list of the organizations you belong to.

If you are the administrator of an organization (we'll make you the admin when you request the organization), you'll be able to manage it.

• If you click Edit, you'll see something like this:
  

  This is a simple page where you can edit your organization's name and the description.

  Important

  The Organization name field is only editable when the organization is cloud2 .

• You can click the View activity button to open a new page where you can see the usage of your entire cloud organization:
  
• You can also click the Details link to launch a new page with the details by repository:
  

Read the following chapter to learn how and what you can manage your Cloud organization.

By clicking the Edit lock rules button in the Cloud dashboard, you can start configuring the exclusive checkout.

The lock rules let you configure exclusive locking for binary files when you perform a checkout.

The exclusive checkout (or locking) is helpful when working with files that cannot be merged, like binary files (images, video, audio...).

Using this feature, you can tell Plastic SCM what kinds of files need locking on checkout. If enabled, checking out a file will prevent other users from doing the same thing until you checkin or undo your changes. Any user can be assured that no new revisions of their checked-out files will appear while they're working on them.

The system performs the following operations:

• Is the file locked? If so, it can't be checked out.
• If it isn't locked, the file can be potentially locked. Plastic SCM will check whether the file name matches any of the defined lock rules. If the file name matches the rules, the file will be locked.

You can define rules that can be applied to:

• All repositories (organization rules)
• To specific repositories. These rules can be file extensions (such as *.xlsx, *.png or *.blend) or specific file names (such as readme.txt).

1. To create / edit lock rules for the organization (all repositories):
   1. Enter the locking rules you want to apply. You can click on the Load common lock rules button to load the most typical rules used (related to binary files). You can add more rules or remove some of them.
      
   2. To store the lock rules, click the Save button to store the lock rules.
2. To create / edit lock rules for a specific repository:
   1. For the repository that you want to edit its lock rules, click the Add repository rules button:
      
   2. A new empty field will appear under the repository name:
      
   3. Enter your own rules or load the suggested common lock rules by clicking Load common lock rules. You can edit them as well.
   4. Click the Save button.

   You can remove all repository rules at any time by clicking the Clear repository rules.

Plastic Cloud uses the same underlying mechanism to handle users and groups, just like a regular Plastic SCM server. But, unlike Plastic SCM, instead of retrieving users and groups from LDAP, Active Directory, or a custom defined user/password file, Plastic Cloud works as follows:

• Users are retrieved from plasticscm.com. You can invite any user to join your organization, and once they sign up to plasticscm.com, they will be valid users.
• Groups are defined by organization. It is just like a cloud-based groups.conf defined from the organization management area. You can add invited users to the groups you create.

You can define access policies to the cloud server for users and groups. You configure access policies by using the Plastic SCM GUI tool or the command-line just like you would do with a regular server. At this point, all that you need to do in the web interface is define the users, the groups, and their relationships.

You can define users as administrators in the web interface, but it just means that they can access the organization's administration area. It doesn't have any influence on the Plastic repositories.

To get a better understanding of Plastic SCM users and groups, refer to our online documentation.

In the Users and groups organization administration area, click Add new user, and you will arrive at this page:

You can enter the email of any user you want to invite, even if they are not yet a plasticscm.com user. They will have to sign up to plasticscm.com before signing in, but you can already configure your groups counting on them as valid users.

By default, any new user will be automatically added to the built-in group called Developers. Of course, you can delete the group or rename it.

By default, every new organization comes with two groups: Administrators and Developers. Every new user marked as Administrator will go to the Administrators group, and everyone else to Developers.

You can add new groups, delete the default ones, or rename them.

You can also add users to a group. Just click the edit icon to the right of the group name to access the group configuration area:

Here, the pre-configured Developers group is edited.

From here, you can delete users and add new ones and also go to create new groups. You can also rename the group and edit its description.

If you click Add new member, you'll go to the following page:

Here, you can add the user's email to add to the group.

As you have seen, configuring your organization is straightforward. You'll get everything you need with just a few clicks.

At this time, configuring users and groups is all that you can do in the web interface. Anything else is done, as usual, from the Plastic SCM GUIs or command-line interface.

What is Plastic Cloud extension?

Plastic Cloud is an extension to Enterprise Edition. It is the perfect way to synchronize multiple teams running Plastic SCM servers on-premises.

You can host gigabytes of data in your Plastic Cloud repositories without issues. More at plasticscm.com/cloud

What do I need to use Plastic Cloud extension?

You'll need a Plastic Cloud subscription if you wish to store your repositories in the Plastic SCM hosted service, combined with an on-premises Plastic SCM subscription.

To subscribe to Plastic Cloud, you must have a valid Plastic SCM license.

Examples:

• Plastic Cloud + your Enterprise Edition license for five users - the entire team will be able to access the Plastic Cloud.

Does Plastic Cloud extension require a local (on-premises) Plastic SCM Server?

Short answer: No, if you use Plastic Gluon. Yes, if you are a developer using the regular Plastic SCM.

Programmers can achieve a better experience by using a distributed workflow with Plastic SCM. This means they will get better performance by pushing/pulling their branches in local repos to/from Plastic Cloud, instead of doing direct checkin to cloud. To work distributed, you need a local server, whether central to the team, installed locally for each developer, or a mix of these combinations.

It is still possible to checkin directly to Plastic Cloud. It is the recommended way to work for users of Plastic Gluon, the tool designed for artists in game development, document writers, project managers, and other team members who don't work on code but work on other binary assets and don't need merge operations. Developers can also checkin directly and merge on Plastic Cloud if they need to.

How do I upload my data to Plastic Cloud?

You need to push your data from your local Plastic SCM server (or your team on-premises server) to Plastic Cloud.

You will push to the Cloud the same way you push to a regular remote Plastic SCM server.

You can set up your sync view to push/pull branches in batches. Remember, your remote repos will be referenced as reponame@organization@cloud. Example: tetris@arcadegarage@cloud. The @cloud part tells Plastic SCM to connect to the cloud server instead of specifying a full IP or domain name.

Can I checkin and merge with Plastic Cloud extension?

Yes, direct checkin and merge have been available since 5.4.16.792 (Nov-14, 2016). We discouraged direct checkin and merge for developers before because we thought it was slow and they would be better served by push/pull from their local repos, but we got many requests from customers who preferred this simpler way of working.

We believe that artists in game development, document writers, project managers, and other team members who don't work on code but other assets will largely benefit from Plastic Gluon + Plastic Cloud. They will be able to perform direct checkins and download only the assets or content files they need. Also, exclusive checkout may be configured to ensure that only one person is modifying each file at a given time.

We believe code developers can achieve a better experience by using a distributed workflow with Plastic SCM. This means they will probably be better served by pushing/pulling their branches to the Cloud, but they can work centralized too if they prefer. They can also merge using the Cloud server.

Some remarks for developers:

• Checkins will be slower in the Cloud because data will have to travel through the Internet (and hence through a higher latency network), instead of performing checkins locally or to a server on your LAN. This is fine for artists and team members working on documents, but developers who expect super-fast checkins will find it slow. In short, checking in to the Cloud for developers is like going back to the old SVN days. Still, we optimize the entire cycle continuously for developers who prefer to work centralized.
• However, while it's certainly also affected by network latency, pushing and pulling branches is something you don't do as frequently. This means that the impact of having a distant server is slower. This is the DVCS style of working: Many local checkins and then just a push, which many developers used to do with Git/GitHub.

In short, you can checkin and merge on Plastic Cloud, but we recommend that developers check the DVCS + Plastic Cloud workflow if they feel they need faster operations.

Can I lock files if I use Plastic Gluon to access Plastic Cloud?

Yes, you can. And, you can configure the files that will be locked on checkout from your Plastic Cloud organization's dashboard.

Which version of Plastic SCM do I need to access Plastic Cloud?

You need 5.4.16.719 or higher. Our network API was updated and expanded for Plastic Cloud, so older versions will not work.

Is the connection to Plastic Cloud secured?

Yes, Plastic Cloud only allows SSL connections. Plastic knows that every connection to @cloud must be secured.

While a regular Plastic SCM server listens both in TCP and SSL, Plastic Cloud is restricted to SSL to enforce secure communications.

Thus, your server or client connection to the Cloud must be correctly configured to use SSL (which is the default out-of-the-box setting, by the way).

What happens if I accidentally remove a repository in Plastic Cloud?

Don't panic. Your data is still there.

When a repository is removed, it's just marked as deleted. You will have up to 14 days to resurrect (or undelete, as we called it on the GUI) a deleted repository. Once these 14 days pass, the repository data and metadata will get removed forever.

Note: You have to be the organization's owner to see the "deleted" repositories list and undo them.

Where is Plastic Cloud hosted?

Plastic Cloud is currently hosted in Microsoft Azure. That means it's built on top of well-proven technology by a trusted provider.

Plastic SCM metadata is stored in a combination of SQL Server Azure plus blob storage. Databases are replicated for high availability and redundancy.

Versioned files are stored in Azure blob storage. Each blob is replicated up to six times in two different physical locations.

What does it mean to choose a datacenter?

To speed up the data transfer, you can choose the closest datacenter to you to store your versioned file data.

There are several datacenters around the world, so by choosing the closest one to your team, you will reduce the network latency and hence greatly improve data transfer.

Does Plastic Cloud provide a way to browse repositories online?

Not currently. You can use your Plastic SCM client to list repos, as you would do with a regular remote Plastic SCM server.

How does Plastic Cloud licensing work?

To subscribe to Plastic Cloud, you need a valid Plastic SCM license (more on "licensing" below). The license can be a valid Enterprise, Cloud, or Personal Edition license. You can also use a Trial Edition.

Then, you need a Plastic Cloud subscription, billed on a per-team basis.

• Plastic Cloud starts at $4.95/month per team for up to 15GB of storage. This level is for teams handling small repos (or at least what Plastic SCM considers small :P).
• The next level is $19.95/month per team for up to 100GB, which is specially designed for game development teams, 3D design teams, or teams who need to handle large binaries.
• After the first 100GB, your subscription will grow by buckets of 50GB, at an additional $7.45/month per team per bucket.

Plastic Cloud will automatically upgrade your subscription to the next size tier without any interruption in the service. You will receive an email with the payment details seven days in advance of the next charge.

I'm a Community Edition user, can I use Plastic Cloud?

Yes, Community Edition users who qualify as open source projects and non-profit organizations can subscribe to Plastic Cloud and use their CE licenses to access the service.

I'm a Personal Edition user, can I use Plastic Cloud?

Yes, you can subscribe to Plastic Cloud while using your Personal Edition for free.

I have a Plastic SCM Trial License; can I use it to connect to Plastic Cloud?

Yes, the Trial License is a full-featured license and allows you to access Plastic Cloud. It's a great way to test the entire ecosystem before you buy since you have 30 days for free to use both products.

What happens if I cancel my subscription?

If you cancel your subscription, you will have a few days (typically one week) to retrieve all your data before we remove your organization to free up space. Upon cancellation, you will receive an email notifying you when the data will be erased.

November 23, 2020

• Now, you can edit the name of your organization.

September 21, 2020

• If you delete a repository by mistake, you will have up to two weeks to undelete it.

June 13, 2019

• Now, the global Plastic Cloud guide is the new Plastic Cloud extension guide. This guide is now adapted to explain you how to access the Plastic Cloud from the Plastic and Gluon clients with your Enterprise Edition and Cloud extension license.

May 29, 2019

• We updated the documentation about how you can access to your Plastic Cloud dashboard and see the activity of your organization and how to administer your organization.

June 29, 2017

• We added a note about the specific ports to use when creating your server profile if you are working in a high security environment.

February 7, 2017

• Learn how to work with Plastic Cloud Edition in your Windows, Linux and macOS systems.

December 14, 2016

• Some screenshots in the guide were updated.

November 30, 2016

• We explain the differences between Plastic SCM Enterprise Edition + Cloud extension and Plastic Cloud Edition.

November 21, 2016

• Since release 5.4.16.792, direct checkin and merge are available in Plastic Cloud.

January 21, 2016

• Learn how to access Plastic Cloud from Gluon.
• If you have more questions about Plastic Cloud, please read the FAQ.

December 4, 2015

• Removed some limitations. We're introducing new features!