Installing passenger on a 20-node farm; tool for automation?

Hi there.

I am installing passenger across our cluster, but this question applies
to software management in general across a farm.

Can you recommend a tool for installing/upgrading software (e.g.
passenger, apache, monit) on an arbitrarily big app server farm?

Thanks,
Chris

I am installing passenger across our cluster, but this question
applies
to software management in general across a farm.

Can you recommend a tool for installing/upgrading software (e.g.
passenger, apache, monit) on an arbitrarily big app server farm?

Try puppet.

Philip H. wrote:

I am installing passenger across our cluster, but this question
applies
to software management in general across a farm.

Can you recommend a tool for installing/upgrading software (e.g.
passenger, apache, monit) on an arbitrarily big app server farm?

Try puppet.

Cool, puppet looks like a great solution (although it looks fairly
involved, so I’ll have to read up a bit more).

Thanks.

On Mar 31, 2009, at 2:59 PM, Chris J. wrote:

I am installing passenger across our cluster, but this question
applies
to software management in general across a farm.

Can you recommend a tool for installing/upgrading software (e.g.
passenger, apache, monit) on an arbitrarily big app server farm?

If you’re willing to run Ubuntu 8.10 right now for all 20 nodes,
‘moonshine’ from RailsMachine works really well!

It can automatically build out a full stack (Apache, Passenger, MySQL,
etc) on systems that have yet to have been installed (and then
continue to maintain and upgrade them).

Rails Machine Projects - Moonshine, Rails Machine Gem, Shadow Puppet

It should work with other distros (and other versions of Ubuntu), but
will require some retrofitting.

I’ve used this tool on a few linode instances so far, and have been
very pleased (although I’m still learning to use it).

-Kevin

Kevin E. wrote:

On Mar 31, 2009, at 2:59 PM, Chris J. wrote:

I am installing passenger across our cluster, but this question
applies
to software management in general across a farm.

Can you recommend a tool for installing/upgrading software (e.g.
passenger, apache, monit) on an arbitrarily big app server farm?

If you’re willing to run Ubuntu 8.10 right now for all 20 nodes,
‘moonshine’ from RailsMachine works really well!

It can automatically build out a full stack (Apache, Passenger, MySQL,
etc) on systems that have yet to have been installed (and then
continue to maintain and upgrade them).

Rails Machine Projects - Moonshine, Rails Machine Gem, Shadow Puppet

It should work with other distros (and other versions of Ubuntu), but
will require some retrofitting.

I’ve used this tool on a few linode instances so far, and have been
very pleased (although I’m still learning to use it).

-Kevin

Good info; I’ll check moonshine out. The servers are mature (they
already have most software package installed, running in a production
environment), so I’ll have to see if moonshine excels both on clean
installs and on machines with existing packages.

Cheers.

Earl Ruby wrote:

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 3:59 PM, Chris J.
[email protected] wrote:

Cool, puppet looks like a great solution (although it looks fairly
involved, so I’ll have to read up a bit more).

Puppet is one of those tools that takes about a day to learn enough
for it to be useful, and after about three days you can’t get along
without it, and after a week you’re cursing yourself for not learning
to use it sooner.

(Highly recommended.)


Earl Ruby
http://earlruby.org/

Funny comment.

Ok, I’m convinced. Thanks for that kick in the pants.

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 3:59 PM, Chris J.
[email protected] wrote:

Cool, puppet looks like a great solution (although it looks fairly
involved, so I’ll have to read up a bit more).

Puppet is one of those tools that takes about a day to learn enough
for it to be useful, and after about three days you can’t get along
without it, and after a week you’re cursing yourself for not learning
to use it sooner.

(Highly recommended.)


Earl Ruby
http://earlruby.org/