How do you decide who in the company should have access to the test and production environments? Opening it up to everyone is one extreme which in today’s security sensitive world is no longer an option. At the far other end, granting only one person access, while perhaps more secure (depending on who you’ve entrusted [...]
Configuration Management (CM)
The core of any management information system, Configuration Management is a form of codified knowledge management focusing on the functional and logical requirements of server infrastructure. SCM is performed increasingly by the configuration manager, a full-time position responsible for providing the business with scaleable, robust systems.
As I mentioned in my short comparison of Puppet vs. Capistrano, we’re currently using Capistrano not only for deployment and live monitoring of our application, but also for configuration management. Using How-To Documents For Configuration Management Before getting started with Capistrano, I used to write very detailed how-to documents to make sure that I didn’t [...]
We’re currently using Capistrano not only to deploy our Ruby on Rails application, but also to setup and manage our physical and virtual (Xen based) servers. We have Capistrano recipes for adding users, installing packages like apache or mysql, configuring a Xen VM and more. Coming accross puppet, I started to wonder about the essential [...]
After years spent working with Cfengine, Luke Kanies decided to form the company Reductive Labs in 2005 and Puppet, a long time idea and quickly stabilizing prototype, was born. He describes it as an open-source, next-generation server automation tool. Configuration files (called manifests) are written declaratively, and there is a client/server model for distribution handling. [...]
As promised in my last post about configuration management, I want to introduce you to one of the key Open Source configuration management players on the scene today – Cfengine. Embarked upon in 1993 by Mark Burgess, Cfengine has helped system administrators configuring and maintaining their servers in the data center for over a decade [...]
The Velocity 2008 Conference hosted many excellent presentations and discussions concerning web performance and operations. Adam Jacob, of HJK Solutions, presented how his company goes about “Building An Automated Infrastructure”. To briefly explain what an automated infrastructure is, let’s think of servers and data as office buildings and automobiles. Would it make sense to begin [...]
