[Modularit-users] ModularIT, the modular service architecture, released under GPL license.

[Andrew Shafer]

Miguel,

Sounds like a great project.

We're happy to see people using Puppet to solve interesting and ambitious
problems.

I would expect you to research the best possible solutions for solving real
problems.

We feel there are many problems Puppet solves very well, and for everything
else we are working to make it better.

The next few releases will enable a lot more flexibility for integrating
data both into and out of the system.

We would like to hear about the type of things you are doing and try to be
helpful about the code in IRC and the mailing list.

There is also a good chance Luke will be in Barcelona at the end of May,
maybe some of you could meet with him and discuss these ideas.

Regards,
Andrew Shafer
Reductive Labs
+1 615.554.8774

Building Better Systems With Better Tools And Processes



2009/4/23 Miguel Armas <kuko at canarytek.com>

> Hi Andrew,
> I'm Miguel Armas (kuko) ModularIT's project leader
>
> ModularIT main goal is to simplify the deployment and management of
> complex IT infraestructures, but focused on companies that manage a
> large number of small/medium infraestructures.
>
> Most of the related projects we find are focused on managing and
> deploying servers in a big datacenter with a fast connection to all
> servers (LAN). Our focus is to simplify this tasks for companies (like
> ours) that give support and manage server for many companies with
> their own installation. All this clients are independent and we only
> have broadband connection to each of them.
>
> ModularIT is really a system integration project, rather that a
> development project. What we do is use existing tools and integrate
> them to accomplish our goals. We only develop some tools to "glue" all
> this together, and right now most of that glue, and our main
> management system is based on Puppet.
>
> We describe ModularIT as a service architecture because it has
> different independent (but related) component and layers:
>
> ** Virtualization **
> All ModularIT services are offered by independent virtual machines.
> This way, every VM is like a block in the infraestructure, that we can
> change as long as we keep the interface between services.
> Right now we use Xen, but we are working on supporting KVM, VMware and
> Amazon EC2
>
> ** Service VM **
> In ModularIT we develop independent virtual maquines (service VM) to
> offer services needed by most companies. We are always looking for new
> services to offer them inside ModularIT.
> The difference between this and a VM repository (there are a lot of
> them) is that in ModularIT all services are designed to cooperate. For
> example, our PBX VM (Asterisk) offer VoIP support to our Fax service,
> so we don't need a phone line nor a modem/fax for the faxing service.
> All services are connected to the LDAP, server, the asterisk server
> can lookup incomming call numbers in the groupware server (eGW), etc
>
> The virtual machines are designed to be self-testing and
> self-correcting. Since all service VM offer only one service, we can
> define **exactly** what it has to do, and what are the normal working
> parameters RAM usage, services that needs to be running, etc. In every
> service VM we have processes that controls all this parameters, and if
> we detect a problem we try to fix it automagically and send a
> notification to the monitoring server.
>
> This testing/correcting framework is based on a prevouis project we
> had, but we are investigating new alternatives. For some of this
> support we may need some small changes in Puppet, so we are trying to
> study the code. If we finally use Puppet for all this tests we will be
> very happy to contribute it to the project
>
> ** Management and Monitoring
> The upper layer is a management and monitoring server. Since we manage
> many smaller companies, we need a hierarchical system. We need to
> install a management/monitoring server in most of the clients, because
> they want to monitor/manage their own systems, but all this
> management/monitoring should be also centralized in our own servers.
> This way, the clients can see the status of their servers, and we have
> a whole picture of all the systems we manage.
>
> Right now we are using a distributed Nagios configuration, that we
> create automatically with Puppet, and we are trying to use a
> distributed Puppet installation, but we have problems with puppet,
> because we can not have the storedconfig database in the client and in
> our main server (or maybe I don't know how to do it ;)
>
> We need to be able to access servers that are behind firewalls and to
> run a command on many hosts (like a push option for puppet, something
> that has been asked several times in the list). We do this with a
> combination of SSH ProxyCommand and a cluster shell (pdsh), and we
> create this config automatically with puppett
>
> I have to confess I've been taking a look at other alternatives like
> Chef, but right now Puppet is still our choice.
>
> Right now, the project is under heavy development and is changing a
> lot. That's why I haven't published a lot and the project might seem
> abandoned. The main reason is that I still haven't published the NOC
> VM (management/monitoring service VM) which is one of the main
> components. I hope to publish it next week to reactivate the
> project....
>
> Well, I hope this message was not too long and you find it
> interesting, and thanks for the great work developing Puppet!!!
>
> Salu2!
> --
> Miguel Armas <kuko at canarytek.com>
> CanaryTek Consultoria y Sistemas SL
>
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