Offline startup in Cloud Drive Mapper (CDM)

The offline startup capability in CDM provides resilience by allowing the application to start even when Bifrost (the IAM Cloud API) is temporarily unavailable.

Overview

The offline startup capability in CDM reduces user impact during a Bifrost outage, allowing CDM to start automatically by using previously cached data to validate the license, retrieve provider settings, and obtain mapping group configurations.

Before the offline startup capability was implemented, the CDM startup flow relied on responses from Bifrost . This dependency meant that if Bifrost was unavailable due to an outage, CDM would not start until the outage was resolved.

How the offline startup in CDM works

When CDM starts successfully, while Bifrost is available, it securely and persistently caches the following information in the user’s local AppData directory:

  • Validated license state

  • Provider settings

  • Latest mapping group configurations

If Bifrost is unavailable, CDM automatically attempts to use the cached data from the previous successful startup and starts without revalidating the license state, retrieving provider settings, or mapping group configurations from Bifrost, and maps drives. This allows users to continue working during service outages without interruption.

The offline startup capability in CDM is designed to protect users from service disruptions caused solely by Bifrost being unavailable. It does not provide offline access to Microsoft 365. If Microsoft 365 is unavailable for any reason, CDM cannot access your files or folders.

Offline startup availability conditions

An offline startup of CDM only works when the following conditions are met:

  • The user has successfully started CDM, and it has validated the license state, retrieved provider settings, and mapping group configurations from Bifrost within the last 120 hours (5 days).

  • Cached data exists in the user’s local AppData directory.

  • Cached data matches the user currently signed in to CDM.

  • After updating CDM to a newer version, it must first connect to Bifrost during startup before an offline startup can work, as cached startup data does not carry across versions.

If any of these conditions are not met, CDM will require connectivity to Bifrost to start up and map drives.