Automatic Update

There are three main components to the Ziti Desktop Edge for Windows: the UI, the 'data' service, the 'monitor' service. These three components are all packed up into a single installer using GitHub Actions and then when ready a release is produced and the installer is added to the release.

When run via the automatic update process the installer will silently install/upgrade all these components in a single operation. If run manually, for example the very first time it is installed, you will witness this process play out and be responsible for providing the appropriate responses. After the software is installed there will be a UI application installed (Ziti Desktop Edge) and two Windows Services created and started: Ziti Desktop Edge Service (ziti) and Ziti Desktop Monitor Service (ziti-monitor).

The Ziti Desktop Monitor Service will periodically check GitHub to see if a new release is available. This period is currently set to 10 minutes by default. If you need or want to change the period you can do so by editing the config file located at {install path}\ZitiUpdateService.exe.config. Do not set this value lower than once a minute or GitHub will throttle your client and prevent the check from succeeding.

Once the Ziti Desktop Monitor Service notices a new release is available it will download the release artifact (the download will be in {install path}\updates), verify the executable was published by "NetFoundry, Inc." (the company that currently supports the OpenZiti project), and then run the installer package silently by running the installer package with the /passive flag.

The installer package will stop the both services and upgrade the solution automatically, starting the services back up again when complete. If the UI was open at this time - it should be closed and reopened if you want to verify the upgrade happened correctly.