On 4/21/13 3:21 PM, "David Nalley" <da...@gnsa.us> wrote:
>Hi folks. > >I've been thinking about our install process lately. > >We currently require folks to muck about with firewall settings, NFS >settings, network configuration, etc. >This makes configuration painful, our docs VERY platform specific, and >easily prone to mistakes which result in failure to get things to >work. Even the 'install.sh' from the 3.0.x and earlier days doesn't do >enough. What I want to do is get rid of sections 2-4 of the quick >install guide, and replace it with - 'run this one or two lines worth >of commands' (http://s.apache.org/runbook) > >My natural reaction was to reach for puppet - but I am not sure that's >the right answer. To do things right, I'd need several puppet modules >like stdlib, puppetlabs-firewall, etc, which is a fair bit of >overhread - and oh, yeah, need to install the puppet client. I think >Chef is probably in a similar problem space. I don't want to resort to >shell scripts of python - config management tools know the difference >between apt and yum, and can still get a package installed with one >declaration, same thing with firewall rules. Is something like Ansible >or SaltStack a better choice?? I don't see it right now if it is, but >I don't have much experience with either of those two. > >The all-in-one installation process I'd like to see: > >Install your host OS >Install an meta-RPM/Deb that either (installs everything, or >alternatively configures a repo - or just installs the repo and the >stuff I need to install with) >Run a command that activates one of these config tools - configures >the machine, installs the packages I need, and gets me to the point >where I'm ready to login and go through the beautiful new user gui >setup stuff. > >I still want to keep the documentation around, it's invaluable for >experienced users and more complex deployments - but right now it's >far too much overhead (probably an hour or two) to get things >installed and setup to the point where you are ready to run the >'Welcome to CloudStack GUI' if you just want to try CloudStack out. > >So why am I writing this email instead of diving in and solving this >problem? Well honestly, I'd like some external opinions. I want to >make sure that I am not seeing a 'nail' simply because I have a hammer >in my hand. How can we most easily do this? So - how do we make the >'brand-new' user experience much better? We develop a platform for >orchestration of complex systems, this should be a solved problem. > >--David +1 for the initiative. If I look at Apache Hadoop's single node operation documentation[1], it is considerably simpler. Apache Tomcat installation is also fairly trivial. [1] http://hadoop.apache.org/docs/stable/single_node_setup.html
