[chef] Re: Request for input on orchestration

[Hedge Hog < >]

On Sat, Jan 29, 2011 at 7:26 AM, Chris Walters 
<
 >
 wrote:
> Ohai Chefs!
> We're in the preliminary stages of designing possible solutions for
> orchestration and would like to understand the community's
> requirements.
> I'm going to write down my thoughts and questions. Nothing is gospel,
> so please feel free to comment on everything, including the framing.
> Background:
> Chef, as currently conceived, does a great job of exposing a model for
> how to get a system from either an embryonic state or a slightly
> misconfigured state to the desired state, mainly via the mechanism of
> resource idempotence.
> What I think is not yet well-modeled is how to go from one
> well-configured state to a completely different well-configued
> state. It also doesn't yet model synchronization of actions across
> multiple boxes in that there isn't a first-class way to gate actions
> that are dependent on the completion of steps on other servers. For
> example, a complex migration or deployment might require bringing
> boxes up or down, copying data, cleanly removing artifacts or services
> installed by previous chef runs, not restarting load balancers until
> some quorum of webservers have re-started, etc.
> We'd like to collect the use cases, requirements, and thoughts that
> best serve the community.
> 1) What do you think the scope of orchestration is and is not?
> 2) What are the use cases that you would like to see an orchestration
> system/DSL accommodate? The more specific and granular the steps of
> the orchestration, the better. (If you would not like your use case
> made public but would nonetheless like it considered during design,
> validation, and testing, please send it to me directly at
> 
 )
> 3) What generic primitives do you think would be useful in such a
> system?

The following overview of Ruote might help people resolve some (all?)
their orchestartion needs:

http://www.engineyard.com/blog/2011/ruote-and-flow/

HTH

> Thanks!
> Chris Walters



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