My research and development environment calls for a heavily customised TRAC with a corresponding subversion repository and a binary file store (e.g. WebDAV).
I have my eye on at least 10 plugins that I would like to use (from integration with time tracking software, to specialist mathematics/code rendering). I'd also like to write my own plugins.
I am looking for a commercial host that will allow me to self-manage my TRAC plugins. I've looked into (and contacted) a few of the commercial providers from the TRAC Commercial Services list, including:
Project Locker
Repository Hosting
SVN Repository
Project Locker have described that they do a code review of plugin requests and handle it on their end (unspecified time period). Repository Hosting have said that they "will probably not add support for that in the near future". SVN Repository have said "you won't be able to install any new plugins" and have suggested one of their VPS accounts instead.
Short of managing my own VPS or dedicated server, does anybody know of a commercial SVN/TRAC host who allows paying customers to install their own plugins? I would have thought a chroot environment would have made this a no-brainer!
(Note: this was originally posted on programmers but was down-voted and I was advised to move it here. Quoting from their FAQ: implementation issues or programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead))
You'll probably find a hard time finding what you're looking for because as Craig mentioned in his comment, the concept of commercial hosting services typically revolves around limiting a customer's ability to customize. Keeping things relatively uniform means that the hosting company can manage systems and deploy automated updates much more easily and won't have to worry about their scripts breaking because of something odd that one customer installed or re-configured.
If you want to be able to install and configure plugins at will, I highly recommend going the VPS route and managing the server yourself. It's easier than you might expect (I was thrown into this situation and was pleasantly surprised). You can start with something like the Bitnami Trac stack, which is a virtual machine image that has a Linux OS plus Trac and all of the support tools (database, webserver, etc) set up and ready to go. If you use that as a starting point, all you should have to do is customize your Trac settings and install your plugins.
If you really don't want to have anything to do with the management aspect, remember that you can always go the VPS route and contract out the administration work separately. It might be easier if the hosting provider and the system admin come from the same company, but it's not a requirement. Given the flexibility and customization that you need, this might be a more realistic option.
Related
I'm searching for a main difference between OpenShift Origin and OpenShift Enterprise. I know that the first is open source and the latter is the commercial version. Have OpenShift Enterprise got other features compared to the open source version?
Thanks in advance.
Update 3/21/2018: If you find this old answer of mine in the future, Enterprise is called "OpenShift Container Platform" now.
The community version goes faster, but with change comes some risk. If you would like to be an early adopter Origin could be your choice. Note: support is best effort by the community, but I have found very helpful people on IRC and on the project's github page.
Link: https://github.com/openshift/origin
The enterprise version has the advantage of professional support for your money. While you won't get features as early, in exchange there is focus on stability and streamlining. This may be important for enterprises. Some solutions / examples may not work exactly the same way. For example application templates, utilities come as part of packages for RHEL users. It also comes with some entitlements for things like RHEL and CloudForms integration.
I tried installing a one master, one node small cluster with both, and found them just as good.
In short, stability or early adoption. Oh, and bugfixes.
Personally I prefer to go with Origin, as you can monitor the state of the project yourself and you are not forced to jump on every coming train. Update when suitable.
OpenShift Origin is the open source community version of OpenShift Enterprise. In order to understand what this means, you need to understand what open source software is - computer software developed via a competitive collaborative model from many individual sources. Origin updates as often as open source developers contribute via git, a version control system, sometimes as often as several times per week.
OpenShift Enterprise 3integrates with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and is tested via Red Hat's QA process in order to offer a stable, supportable product for customers who want to have their own private or onsite cloud. Enterprise might update around every six months, maintaining stabilization across minor updates. Providing timely professional support for each query they have from installation/POC to the production.
I have webspace and I was thinking of setting up a git repository on it.
If I am developing software and I want to host a repository (CVS, SVN, git, etc) online, is there any reason not to use a standard web hosting provider (GoDaddy, etc) to do this?
I'm thinking in terms of security, reliability, etc.
One reason for not using a standard-company is that usually shell-access is needed to setup a Version Control System (VCS). Many providers don't give shell access on normal webspaces.
When you are developing open-source software I'd recommend hosting at SourceForge, github, Google Code or similar providers, as your code is public there, you will get an issue tracker and several other tools that may help you. On github for example adding more developers to your project is very easy.
When you are developing closed-source software you still can use github, this gives you the same advantages as mentioned above, but of course it costs you a few bucks a month. Open-Source projects are free.
So while there is no real reason to not use standard hosting providers there are good reasons to use a company dedicated on hosting code.
As you asked especially for security: github (I use it as an example, as I host my code there as well) gives you a full list of information of what they do to ensure your code is safe.
I am developing a Remote Software Provisioning system that should be able to handle all deployment, installation, un-installation and upgrades of software components. Software can be in any language (java, .net, c/c++ etc) and target side can be PC, embedded systems and smart phones.
I have found Apache ACE as good candidate for developing this system.
I want to know if there is any advantage/necessity of using OSGi at target side as Apache ACE can do software provisioning to non-OSGi targets as well.
Having a modular framework like OSGi at the client side is a huge advantage when doing remote management, because it gives you much insight into what's happening inside - installed bundles, dependencies, states of the bundles, available services etc. This helps a lot when you have to solve a problem remotely. Another advantage is that OSGi basically forces programmers to develop proper modular and dynamic systems, which makes (remote) updating much easier.
So, if you have to decide now what language and framework to use for the client side, I strongly recommend OSGi for the embedded and mobile clients. For the PCs (I guess you mean desktop PCs?) this is probably not the best choice - it depends a lot what you want to achieve there. If you want to install MS Office remotely OSGi won't bring you forward ;)
However, if you already have existing programs at the client side and are discussing whether to convert them to OSGi, I would recommend to investigate some time first to see whether they can be converted easily. Some software packages could give you a lot of trouble converting to OSGi, not because OSGi is complex, but because the program itself is not modular and has a lot of assumptions about the static nature of the environment (e.g. nothing ever disappears, parts of the system never get updated etc.). The irony in the matter is that these are exactly the programs which will give you most trouble later anyway no matter which remote provisioning system you chose.
If you have OSGi at some of the targets be sure to use a remote provisioning system which gives you access to the full OSGi functionality and not only the most basic and simple install and update functions. I haven't yet used Apache ACE, but I have experience with another provisioning system - mPower Remote Manager. Here are some snapshots from the documentation which can give you a feeling what is possible with OSGi as a base - you can draw your own conclusions whether it will be useful for your case or not.
I've given some examples in the other question you asked:
What are the non-osgi targets with which Apache ACE can work
You can write your own management agent that talks to the ACE server and installs artifacts. There actually are a couple of places where you could hook in your own code and protocol. Is there a concrete language/environment you're thinking of using, or are you just exploring the possibilities right now?
Well, the advantages of OSGi haven't changed, so for that I can refer you to the standard page.
To be a bit more constructive, I'll read the question as 'Should I bother converting my application to OSGi, as it is not necessary for ACE?'
I think that depends on what 'kind' of updating mechanism you're after. If you have a monolithical application (at least from the provisioning perspective) which you deploy and update only as a whole (Like an iOS app) then there isn't much to gain for provisioning purposes by using OSGi.
For the rest I can tell you the same as I tell anybody else: Converting an application to OSGi isn't hard, but modularizing code can be a nightmare, but something you'll need to face at some point, OSGi or not. If your code is modularized already, using OSGi should be a piece of cake.
I'm currently setting up a new build server and I'm interested in any suggestions the community may have about software such as Hudson or CruiseControl.NET that may simplify and add additional value to the build process.
Previously I had a build server set up using custom batch files which would run msbuild and other such tools and these were triggered by subversion hooks to allow for a continuous builds to be done per branch. The idea was that eventually we would also execute automated tests and/or static analysis although we never really got that far. This server also acted as our source code repository, a test machine for web project builds, and a web server for custom dashboard and portal for developers on the team.
At this point my thoughts are to separate some of the responsibilities of the old build server and at least a Build Server which is responsible only for creating builds, a web server which is responsible for acting as the intranet style dashboard site for developers, and perhaps an additional web server as the Subversion repository. If it turns out to be better or easier to keep the Subversion code on the same server as SvnServe then I'll probably opt to place the Subversion repository on the web server but still keep the build server separate. Having no personal experience with any of the popular build server and CI solutions out there I'm curious how CruiseControl.NET, Hudson or other solutions would fit into this type of configuration. It appears that both of CC.NET and Hudson have web interfaces for example but the documentation doesn't clearly layout how this plays out with different hardware/system configurations so I'm not sure if either requires the web portion to be on the build server itself or not.
As far as technologies I'm dealing with .NET/C# based code which is a mix of Web/WinForms/WPF and we use a few separate Subversion repositories to host these projects. Additionally it would be nice to support Visual FoxPro and Visual Source Safe for some legacy applications. I would also like to get more team members involved in monitoring builds and would like to eventual have developers create build setups for their own projects as well with as much simplicity as possible. Also I should mention that I have no experience setting up a Java based web application in IIS but I do have quite a bit of experience setting up and managing ASP.NET applications so if that may make .NET based products more favorable unless I can be convinced otherwise.
UPDATE (after researching Hudson): After all the recommendations for Hudson I started looking into what is involved to get it up and running on my two Windows 2008 servers. From what I can gather the web portion (master) would run on my webserver but it seems that IIS isn't supported so this would greatly complicate things since I want to host it on the same machine as my other web applications. On the build server, I would be installing a second copy of Hudson that would act as a slave and only perform builds that are delegated to it by the master. To get this to work I would be installing Hudson as a Windows Service and would also need to install some unix compatibility utilities. Unfortunately the UnxUtils download link appears to be broken when I checked as well so I can't really move forward until I get that resolved. All of this is really sounding just as complex if not more complex than installing CruseControl.NET. For now this unfortunately leaves me to looking into CruiseControl.NET and TeamCity.
UPDATE (about TeamCity): After looking into TeamCity a little closer I realized that at least the server portion is also written in Java and is deployed in a manner very similar to Hudson. Fortunately it appears that Tomcat can be used to host servlets inside IIS although I can't find a good straight forward guide to describe how to actually do accomplish this. So skipping that for now I looked further when I ran into what looks like what might be a major snag.
TeamCity Professional edition only
supports TeamCity Default
Authentication and does not support
changing the authentication scheme.
Since windows authentication is likely the direction we will want to go, it's now looking like it might be back to evaluating CruiseControl.NET or possibly Hudson if I can get my hands on the UnxUtils and also find out more about how I can host the dashboard portion of Hudson within my existing IIS configuration. Any pointers?
UPDATE (about Jenkins): I ended up experimenting enough with Hudson that I ended up with a reasonable build server setup that I'm happy with and that can be extended to do much more if I need. Of course I went the rout of converting to Jenkins once Oracle took over Hudson and Jenkins is what I'm using today with little bits of powershell to help tie things together. I'm very happy with this approach right now and besides being Java based, Jenkins has quite a bit of support for other development environments such as .NET and MSBuild.
I'd vote for TeamCity here. Its is very, very easy to get stood up and running, integrates with all your .NET stuff without any trouble. The builds themselves are run by agents which can be on the build server or another machine depending on requirements--they could even be on a machine running an entirely different OS on a different network in a different country.
I highly recommend using Hudson. Not only will it allow you to build .NET applications on a continual basis, but you can also run code analysis and unit tests as well. It's easy to install (just deploy a WAR file to a web server such as Tomcat) and has many configuration options. There is also a large number of plugins available that you can use, many written by other Hudson users. Best of all, it is free and actively supported.
For our decision making process we started with following overview.
http://confluence.public.thoughtworks.org/display/CC/CI+Feature+Matrix
Our main objective was java, easy to configure/use even after nobody created a job for 6 months. We moved away from a old version of Cruise Control, since nobody really knew how to use it. Some of the commercial products are nice if you want to go beyond just continuous integration. Have a look and decide for yourself.
Be careful, I don't know how up to date this matrix is. So some of the projects might have implemented more functions right now.
An interesting alternative could be Jira studio by Atlasian. If you use the hosted version you don't have much on support issues and it comes with subversion, bamboo, and goodies (jira+greenhopper, confluence, crucible, fisheye). http://www.atlassian.com/hosted/studio/
I agree with Wyatt Barnett. TeamCity is the best choice. It is very easy to configure and use. Moreover, TeamCity has a Free Professional Edition. Previously we used CruiseControl.NET on our project. This is also a powerful tool, but it is very complicated and hard to understand.
What s.ermakovich said: Both TeamCity and Hudson separate the web UI from build agents. You shouldn't need to install IIS on a build agent. You'd need to install a JVM and the agent software on any build node - very straightforward.
What tools or strategies are you using for automation of EC2 activities?
I need to be able to bring up a number of EC2 instances, provision various software to it (primarily Python packages), interact with S3 (primarily download data), and run various jobs. I'll be doing this both on-demand and on a scheduled basis.
I'm trying to decide if I should:
Create an AMI with all my software loaded on it
or
Launch a plain vanilla linux AMI instance and scp my software to it
For the provisioning and automation Boto looks pretty good. Or I could write something with Paramiko. Recommend either or anything else I should be looking it?
Basically I'm looking for advice / success stories, let me know what's working for you.
To answer your bullets about selecting AMIs, I would say that it depends on how much software you're installing.
I have been successful with a hybrid approach, where I build an AMI and load my heavyweight and more stable software. This is the stuff that needs to run an installer, or takes considerable time to install (remember that if you re-install a package every time as part of your startup process, you're paying for the install every time). Then, I upload the small and volatile software at provisioning/startup time. In this bucket goes most of the application code, data, etc. That way, I can change my app and not have to touch the AMI.
The benefits of this approach:
Don't have to pay for running the same software install thousands of times.
AMI can stay fairly stable over time.
Can use software that requires intervention or GUI interaction to install.
Major drawbacks:
Your AMI's OS version will become stale over time.
Your AMI may not be flexible as to the instance type/architecture it will run on. For instance, you may create it on a 32-bit OS and thereby prevent it from running on the High CPU instance types, or vice versa. So you may lock yourself into a pricing scheme.
I don't use Python, so I can't comment on either of the APIs you referenced.
AWS just released the Systems Manager suite, which includes an Automation service that will (among other things) handle your use cases around AMIs.
This question was asked some time ago now but I believe my answer could be useful to other users. I believe the best automations tools available on the market are provided by Cloud Management platforms. For example they offer auto-scaling, configuration software integration (Chef/Puppet), databases replications, dns management...
The most popular cloud management softwares are Scalr (disclaimer: I work there), RightScale and enStratus. Scalr is open-source and released under the Apache 2 license.
Regarding your specific question on AMIs, cloud Management platforms usually provide pre-configured AMIs (at Scalr, we call them roles). If you want to create your own AMI built on an existing instance, you'll be able to create snpashots and use them as a template for future instances.