[Server-devel] Modularizing the school server

[David Farning]

Over the past couple of months Activity Central has be looking at the
possibility of puppetizing school server setup. The primary reason I
support  puppet as a installation and maintenance system is it
eliminates either/or decisions.  One person can solve a problem using
one approach and someone else can solve the problem using a different
approach. At Install time the customer(the deployment) can chose which
solution he prefers for his particular needs.

Thus the deployment admin can easily assemble an infrastructure (to
meet their needs) from set of building blocks. This is the basic
concept behind kernel device drivers, drupal and moodle modules, and
distribution packages. The downside is that this modular type of
systems is less effective for a single organization such as OLPC or AC
to develop and support.  It only becomes cost effective as the number
of contributors increase.

_A_ solution. The solution that I would like AC pursue is creating and
testing a Deployment Management System. Initially, the DMS would
consist of a puppet master and set of puppet modules which dynamically
build a school server which is compatible with the XS0.[6|7].

Just like with drupal or moodle, there would be a core XS which could
be the focus of OLPC's development efforts.  Activity Central could
focus on the puppet master and common non-core puppet modules.
Deployments could easily submit their customizations as puppet
modules.

david