Web Development Infrastructure David Brewer Lead Systems Developer - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Web Development Infrastructure David Brewer Lead Systems Developer Second Story Interactive Studios

The presentation formerly known as “Using Ubuntu, Virtualization, and Automation to Improve Your Web Development Workflow” David Brewer Lead Systems Developer Second Story Interactive Studios

I'll cover... ● Introduction and definitions ● Evolution of infrastructures ● Infrastructure tools ● A system that works

What is a development infrastructure?

Infrastructure includes... ● Hardware ● Software ● Wetware

Photo by John Tregoning

You have an infrastructure, whether or not you know it. Photo by Sam Pullara

An analogy Photos by Nick Taylor, TravOC, and Graham Richardson

Original photo by James Duncan Davidson/O'Reilly Media

“Secession or Union?” at the Gettysburg Museum and Visitor Center

Great War T ables at the National World War I Museum

Media Wall at the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum

Bank of America Data Mirrors

National Postal Musem's Arago: http://arago.si.edu

International Quilt Study Center's Collection Explorer: http://explorer.quiltstudy.org

The National Archives Experience Digital Vaults: http://digitalvaults.org

Monticello Explorer: http://explorer.monticello.org

National Museum of American History: http://americanhistory.si.edu/militaryhistory/

Evolution of web development infrastructures

Assumptions ● Version control ● Issue tracking ● Deploy scripts ● Project not yet 'live' ● Internal and external clients

When you assume... $u = $me = Photo by Gabor Karpati

Single server

“This project doesn't have the budget for more than one server.” Screen capture from “The IT Crowd”, Channel 4

“I hope you didn't just save foobar.php because I haven't checked in my changes all day.” Screen capture from “The IT Crowd”, Channel 4

“Did I just find a bug, or did you expect that bit to be broken?” Screen capture from “The IT Crowd”, Channel 4

“The client is reviewing the site. Can you not break anything for the next week, while you add these features?” Screen capture from “The IT Crowd”, Channel 4

Single server

Single server (realistic)

DO NOT WANT

Shared dev + production

Local dev + staging + production

ColdFusion MX Perl 5.8 PHP 4 PHP 5 SQL Server 2000 MySQL 5 MySQL 4 IIS 5 Apache 2 Apache 1 Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elderh

“Well, it worked on MY machine.” Screen capture from “The IT Crowd”, Channel 4

Dev servers + staging + production

Decouples Decouples dev project workstations installs from servers Photo by Chance Agrella. Used courtesy of Free Range Stock.

Remaining problem 1: money “You want to buy HOW many servers?” Screen capture from “The IT Crowd”, Channel 4

Remaining problem 2: time Server Setup You Sisyphus by Franz von Stuck, 1920

It ain't gonna fly. Photo by nickstone333

Infrastructure tools

How can I reduce licensing costs?

Photo by Steve Deger

Photo by Ben McLeod

Photo by William Warby

Photo by rp72

How can I reduce hardware costs?

“But, you already HAVE a server.” Screen capture from “The IT Crowd”, Channel 4

Intro to virtualization

Our selection criteria ● Free ● Works on Linux and Windows ● Reliable and easy to use ● Available in 2006

Beer photo by Afonso Lima

Beer photo by Afonso Lima

Beer photo by Afonso Lima

Copying servers

Run identical web dev setup... ... on Linux ... on Windows (... on OS X, too, but not for free.)

Eases transition to Linux

A few notes on hardware ● Get lots of RAM ● Get lots of disk space ● For servers, get SCSI

How can I reduce setup time?

Configuration management tools:

AutomateIt overview ● The big picture ● Package management ● Config file munging ● Services ● Easy to extend ● Etc, etc, etc

Tags

Fields

Master recipe

PHP installation recipe

Benefit: quick server setup

Benefit: quick server setup Video by dvpurugs (http://www.youtube.com/user/dvpurugs)

Benefit: synchronize servers

Benefit: documents your config

A system that works

Our web development infrastructure

VMware Server

Production virtual server

Staging virtual server

Development sandboxes

Version control

AutomateIt

It's affordable Photo by ajajulian

Ubuntu community Photo by rp72

Fast server provisioning Screenshot of video by dvpurugs (http://www.youtube.com/user/dvpurugs)

Sandboxes = stability Photo by Giedrius M

Servers have consistent software

Develop on platform of choice

Reliable staging servers

Happy clients

Areas for improvement ● Issue 1: requires sysadmin skills ● Issue 2: consumes lots of disk ● Issue 3: exposes weaknesses in deploy systems

Second Story Interactive Studios: http://www.secondstory.com [We're Hiring!] Ubuntu: http://www.ubuntu.com VMware Server: http://vmware.com/products/server/ AutomateIt: http://automateit.org/