Daniel Pittman wrote:
"Dmitry V'yal" <akam...@gmail.com> writes:
I'm currently administering a vps running a dozen of php-sites. I use
several scripts for deploying new sites, updating them, taking the backups
and so on. All the system is quite fragile and error-prone. I'm thinking
about some more integrated solution. Can puppet be useful in my situation?
Or is it primarily intended for managing big number of similarly configured
hosts?
Puppet can be useful to you, but you might also have to change the way you
approach things.
I'm always ready.
Anyway, to answer the specific questions:
Yes, puppet is useful to you. (IMO, obviously.)
Regardless of if puppet is intended to manage multiple similar hosts, it is
still useful when you have a smaller number of unique hosts.
If every host is completely unique then you get one some benefits of puppet:
* you have a single place to review your configuration
* you can make changes without having to do it by hand
* puppet checks nothing has changed, and puts it back if something has
However, I bet that all your hosts are a *lot* more alike than you think:
* you probably use the same web server (apache, or so), and *mostly* have it
set up the same way on each machine, right?
* you probably use the same MTA on most machines
* you probably use the same log watching and checking stuff on 'em all
* you probably have similar needs for installing PHP and some extra PHP
modules, which are usually configured more or less the same.[1]
* you probably do a bunch of "install mysql, configure like this" stuff the
same on each host.
Hmm, you're right, I didn't thought about it, but each member of our
team has a desktop machine he uses for development and testing. And as
it comes to web related things, the setup is intentionally almost the
same as on the server.
Also, currently we're planning to change the geographic location of vps
and to move from gentoo to ubuntu. Looks like a perfect time for big
changes.
So, even at the scale you are looking I bet there is a whole lot of "same"
between the machines you can exploit — and if you actively look for that you
can create a whole lot more same.
(Plus, once your hosts are more similar than different you can spend all your
time focused on getting the software right rather than working out how you
set up this particular machine. :)
Yeah, I'm beginning to understand that :)
Thanks for the ideas.
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