why you should be using aegir: the drupal-oriented hosting system

Why you should be using AegirSeth Viebrock - Origin Eight

Ægenda

• Intro to Aegir

• Installing Aegir

• Aegir in the workplace

• Using Aegir

• Aegir platform maintenance

• Aegir deployment

Intro to Aegir

Intro to Aegir

• What is Aegir?

• Who is using Aegir?

• Why use Aegir?

What is Aegir?

•A Hosting Management System (HMS)

•A Control Panel

•A Drupal platform management tool

•A site deployment tool

Who is using Aegir?

•Individual developers

•Web development companies

•Universities

•Hosting companies

Why use Aegir?

•Only takes minutes to install Aegir itself!

•Easy site spin-up

•Easy platform management

•Allows you to focus on Drupal over sysadmin

Installing Aegir

• Where to install Aegir

• Installation demo

• Securing your server

Installing Aegir

Where to install Aegir

•A VPS or dedicated server with root access

•A Virtual Machine on your own computer

•Check out the “aegir-up” project, or at least Vagrant.

•Don’t install on a machine that is already flushed out.

Installation demo

• Basic command line skills

• The ability to type “apt-get” and copy-paste instructions.

• Basic UNIX text editor skills (i.e. vim, emacs, nano, pico, etc)

• For production use: Ability to handle basic server maintenance and security, or the ability to pay someone to do it for you.

• Willingness to let go, and do things The Aegir Way.

Prerequisites

•This demo uses the the “Automatic install on Debian” approach outlined at http://community.aegirproject.org/node/400

•Uses a Debian 6 install on a Linode (linode.com)

Versus a manual install

Linode install

Aegir install

Aegir Platform install

Linode install

Securing your server

•Install it on a bare server or VPS

•Keep Aegir up to date

•Follow basic security measures for your particular server, i.e. http://www.thefanclub.co.za/how-to/how-secure-ubuntu-1204-lts-server-part-1-basics

Aegir IN The workplace

•Do you have to make a request to a sysadmin just to get a new dev site set up?

•Do you have a hackneyed or nonexistent process for upgrading Drupal core and performing security updates?

•Do you have to ask someone to find out where any given site is hosted?

•Are permissions on your files and folders unpredictable?

Using aegir

1.Create a platform (say, Drupal 7.14)

2.Create one or many sites in the platform. Clone a site if you wish!

3.Create another platform (say, with security updates in place, i.e. Drupal 7.18)

4.Migrate a site on another platform to the new platform.

5.Repeat

Basic workflow

1.Add SSL certs via the Aegir UI.

2.Delete sites. Disable sites. Backup sites.

3. Optional: drush sql-drop -y && drush sqlc < some-other-database.sql

OTHER workflow

1.Sites, tasks, platforms are “content” (nodes) in Aegir.

2.Content is mapped to configuration on the filesystem.

3.drushrc files

HMS

interesting use cases• Create throw-away experimental sites in seconds.

• Want to try a new distribution? i.e. Panopoly? Just download it, point a new Aegir platform at it, and create a site in that platform with a path to the .make file.

• If you have developers, just give them access! You can restrict access perms as needed. Let them spin up sites. Don’t make them ask and wait for sysadmins!

• Use it to provision dev environments for developers, in the case where each dev instance has its own database.

•I’ll give a quick look at the UI. (Live demo!)

•Does anyone have any questions on how to do something specific?

Eccentricities

• Can’t install a new site on a custom platform a client handed over to you? Just install a site on your own platform and migrate to this platform.

• The aegir UNIX user owns all the code, and the www-data user owns the files. We’ve found that individual developer user accounts should be placed in the www-data and aegir groups to avoid permissions issues and allow access to modify the code.

Aegir Platform maintenance

•Live demo!

Aegir Deployment

•If you have a really beefy server, especially one that can scale on demand, and/or you have very few sites to manage, dev/integration/staging/production could technically be on the same server.

•Recommend having separate server for dev and integration, and a separate server for staging and production.

•Can only deploy the first release of a site (i.e. the first release from dev/integration to production).

Why should you be using aegir?

•Aegir is awesome! And free! And extensible!

•Aegir as a SaaS business model.

•It helps ease awkward tasks:

•platform maintenance and security upgrades

•site installation and multisite architecture

•These awkward tasks are pain points for many users that might prevent them from using Drupal.

•Aegir and Drupal are symbiotic.