Snowflake Server

Re:Snowflake Server by cwp on Tuesday July 10, 2012 @08:34PM (#4227079)

I did the same thing. What's nice about the Phoenix approach is that you start with a known state (base Ubuntu install or whatever) and end with a known state (running your setup) and completely ignore all other possible states. A tool like chef or puppet has to have a lot of complexity around examine a node, determine what state it's in and figure out how to get it to the desired state.

I also use boto in my fabfile, so that I can run a single command to launch an EC2 instance, install & configure software on it, save an AMI and terminate the instance. It's a like having a Makefile that compiles machine images:

    > fab build:<role> <region>

I wouldn't go as far as Fowler's "disable the shell" idea, but it doesn't take much discipline to do all significant changes by building new AMIs.

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Re:Snowflake Server by heretohelp on Tuesday July 10, 2012 @09:48PM (#4227304)

I don't believe in AMIs.

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Re:Snowflake Server by cwp on Tuesday July 10, 2012 @10:20PM (#4227392)

You mean you don't believe in making your own AMIs? I don't see how you could run an instance without an AMI.

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Re:Snowflake Server by heretohelp on Tuesday July 10, 2012 @10:22PM (#4227396)

I mean I don't believe in AMIs. You seem to think I'm an Amazon customer.

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Re:Snowflake Server by cwp on Wednesday July 11, 2012 @02:52AM (#4228112)

No. I'm an Amazon customer.

If you prefer some other IaaS, fine. The point is that fabric can drive both the virtualization API and the actual set up of servers over SSH. I have a fake region called "dev" that runs the build against a vmware image on my local machine. It could work with Softlayer or Joyent or Rackspace or CloudFoundry or whatever.

Fabric and an IaaS provider is a really nice way to implement the PheonixServer pattern.

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