Hi everyone,
This is Ahmed, I work for Ubuntu helping the cloud community. Ubuntu has been working on some hot technology, that aims to be "apt-get for the cloud"! Basically Install and manage large scale cloud deployments of web applications (and others) with the equivalent ease of "apt-get install". The reason I'm posting this here, is because the very first use-case for this technology (called Ensemble) has been MediaWiki (yaay)!
To get a feel for Ensemble, here is how you'd deploy a 4 machine Mediawiki installation DB -> MediaWiki -> memcached -> HAproxy Loadbalancer ----->8--------- # Deploy machines ensemble deploy mysql wiki-db ensemble deploy mediawiki demo-wiki ensemble deploy memcached wiki-cache ensemble deploy haproxy wiki-balancer # Connect them together! ensemble add-relation wiki-db demo-wiki:db ensemble add-relation wiki-cache demo-wiki ensemble add-relation wiki-balancer:reverseproxy demo-wiki:website ----->8--------- Slashdotted? Want to scale out? You'd need something like ensemble add-unit wiki-cache ensemble add-unit demo-wiki
Yes, it's that easy! Ensemble takes care of informing MW about the new memcached server just spun up, and informing HAproxy about the new MW...etc! You can view the formula code that does all the magic at http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ensemble-composers/principia/oneiric/mediawiki/... http://bazaar.launchpad.net/%7Eensemble-composers/principia/oneiric/mediawiki/trunk/files/head:/hooks/ The reason I am contacting you guys, is that you're the MediaWiki experts. I am very interested to get feedback from you on what you think of Ensemble today, what you think it should do tomorrow, and most importantly to help improve the MW formula
The main project page is: https://ensemble.ubuntu.com/ Ensemble documentation: https://ensemble.ubuntu.com/docs Development resources (source code, bugs, etc) are available in Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/ensemble To connect to the Ensemble community, You can subscribe to the mailing list at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ensemble And there's also an active IRC channel: #ubuntu-ensemble @ Freenode
If you reply here, I'll try answer questions, but it's better to post Ensemble feedback directly on Ensemble channels (since that's where the devs and formula writers are). In the mean time, if there's any questions or thoughts grab me (kim0 on freenode) right away.
I'd love to see more collaboration between the MW community and the Ensemble community to make MW a dream to install/run/manage/scale on the cloud. I am willing to help in any way possible to make this happen. Interested? What next steps do you think we should take?
Cheers
Ahmed Kamal wrote:
Hi everyone,
Thanks for contacting with us, Ahmed.
This is Ahmed, I work for Ubuntu helping the cloud community. Ubuntu has been working on some hot technology, that aims to be "apt-get for the cloud"! Basically Install and manage large scale cloud deployments of web applications (and others) with the equivalent ease of "apt-get install". The reason I'm posting this here, is because the very first use-case for this technology (called Ensemble) has been MediaWiki (yaay)!
To get a feel for Ensemble, here is how you'd deploy a 4 machine Mediawiki installation DB -> MediaWiki -> memcached -> HAproxy Loadbalancer ----->8--------- # Deploy machines ensemble deploy mysql wiki-db ensemble deploy mediawiki demo-wiki ensemble deploy memcached wiki-cache ensemble deploy haproxy wiki-balancer # Connect them together! ensemble add-relation wiki-db demo-wiki:db ensemble add-relation wiki-cache demo-wiki ensemble add-relation wiki-balancer:reverseproxy demo-wiki:website ----->8--------- Slashdotted? Want to scale out? You'd need something like ensemble add-unit wiki-cache ensemble add-unit demo-wiki
Yes, it's that easy!
Well, you still need to know that you need 4 machines and what is each of them. I first got confused thinking that they were packages on a single machine. So, when you add a second demo-wiki, how is the second mediawiki configured? A simple copy ? How are further changes synced?
What about optional packages? If you are installing for a large scale cloud deployment of mediawiki you probably also want php-apc, or wikidiff2 extension.
I see you are creating your own LocalSettings.php, but the way you are installing it is really ugly. I advance you that it will break in the new installer of MediaWiki 1.17 You will have an install.php cli script there, though. (i have to admit, it is really the fault of ubuntu package that it doesn't create the database or thatit leaves the tables broken on update)
I recommend you to plan and test with 1.17 and tell us if you need some additional feature. It still could enter in the release, if it's simple enough. http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/branches/REL1_17/phase3/
Cheers
On 09/06/11 17:48, Ahmed Kamal wrote:
Hi everyone,
This is Ahmed, I work for Ubuntu helping the cloud community. Ubuntu has been working on some hot technology, that aims to be "apt-get for the cloud"! Basically Install and manage large scale cloud deployments of web applications (and others) with the equivalent ease of "apt-get install". The reason I'm posting this here, is because the very first use-case for this technology (called Ensemble) has been MediaWiki (yaay)!
<snip>
Hello Ahmed,
You probably want to contact the Wikimedia operation team which might be interested in an easy tool to handle the cluster. Mark Bergsma, Rob Halsell, Ryan Lane and maybe Tim Starling.
;)
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org