[Infrastructures] Questions about isconf4...

[Juri Rischel Jensen]

Hi all,

I'm in the process of finding the right configuration automation tool  
for my shop. I've looked at isconf several times over the last five  
years, but have been reluctant to try it as I couldn't see it fit  
into our systems. I've also found the documentation to be lacking  
when it came to instructions/guidelines to actual deployment and I'm  
really glad to see that this has changed a lot in version 4. And  
beeing implemented in Python also adds to my final vote.

Anyways, my problem is that, although I've read all the documentation  
and skimmed the messages from the last 3-4 months in the  
mailarchives, I still don't exactly understand how I'm supposed to  
use isconf4. Let me explain in more detail:

1. The documentation says that I should keep the branch count down. I  
can make sense
    of that, but what if I have 3 webservers in my domain, have them  
share the same
    branch and then on hostA do a

      isconf lock "Enabling new_apache_vhost"
      isconf snap new_apache_vhostfile.conf
      isconf exec a2ensite new_apache_vhostfile.conf
      isconf exec /etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload
      isconf ci

    Then I have a history of what I've done on hostA, I have my newly  
added vhosts
    config file in the isfs and can replay that journal entry again  
if needed in the
    future. But as I understand it, the same journal entry gets  
excuted on hostB and
    hostC because they share the same branch as hostA. Please correct  
me if I'm wrong
    here.

2. I can see in the journal file that every entry gets an ID. Have  
you planned on
    implementing a "changelog" verb - eg. "isconf changelog" to see  
the history?

3. In our shop we do system administration for several customers and  
need to keep
    some of the configuration separate (the stuff that's different).  
If I should
    implement a solution based on isconf4, as I see it I would have  
to manually build
    the whole configuration structure from the bottom by issuing  
isconf commands in
    the right order. I can't reuse some of the things from one  
customer when starting
    up a new one, as I can't share branches between domains. I'm  
looking for a tool
    where I can reuse as much of my work as possible when starting a  
new site (domain
    in isconf lingo).

I probably have more questions, but can't remember them right now.  
Too tired.

I'm looking forward for an answer...


--
Med venlig hilsen
Juri Rischel Jensen

Fab:IT ApS
Vesterbrogade 50
DK-1620 København
Tlf: 70 202 407 / Fax: 33 313 640
www.fab-it.dk / juri@fab-it.dk