[Modularit-users] ModularIT vs eBox

[Miguel Armas]

2009/1/29 Pau Garcia i Quiles <pgquiles at elpauer.org>:
> Hello,
>
> I have couple of very basic questions:
>
> * How different is ModularIT from eBox Platform (
> http://ebox-platform.com ) ? I admit I have not looked too deep into
> either ModularIT or eBox but the main difference I see is in ModularIT
> services run in a virtual machine while in eBox they all run on the
> same operating system.

This is probably a FAQ and we should clarify it in the web page...

The best way to explain this is starting by saying what ModularIT is
and what it is not.

ModularIT IS really 4 things:
- A service architecture based on virtual machines
- A repository of virtual machine images designed to cooperate and to
be auto-testing and auto-correcting.
- A system for fast deployment of service virtual machines
- A framework for managing and monitoring a large number of ModularIT
installations

ModularIT IS NOT:
- A virtualization technology (we use Xen and/or KVM)
- A Linux distribution (We use mainly CentOS, but also have some VM
with Ubuntu, and we even have plans for windows servers)
- "Just" a repository of virtual machines. In ModularIT all service VM
are designed to interact and use the services provided by other
virtual machines. For example, the Asterisk VM can lookup the calling
number in the global phonebook (provided bu the eGW VM) to setup the
Caller ID
- A Web tool to simplify service configuration.

As I see it, the main difference between eBox and ModularIT can be its
target "users".
- eBox is a project oriented to simplify basic service deployment to
non-technical end users. Normally an eBox installation is confined in
a company and it is managed by that company IT team.
- ModularIT is oriented to simplify deloying, monitoring and managing
a large number of services in different companies. It's target users
are IT companies that manages IT services for other companies. In
ModularIT, each service machine is autonomous and it does it's own
testing and self-healing tasks. It only depend on external hosts for
updates and event notification, but not for service monitoring (unlike
Nagios+remote plugins), this way if a ModularIT host looses connection
to the Internet, we won't receive any alerts, but it still tests
itself and corrects any problem if possible.

Both projects can complement each other, and I think eBox will make an
excellent platform for ModularIT services virtual machines, because
eBox has a much better interface for easy configuration of services.

> * Is it possible to store the virtual machines in a SAN (Fibre
> Channel, iSCSI, AoE, etc) and boot from there or does ModularIT
> require that they are stored locally?

Of course! In ModularIT, the virtualization server is a minimal CentOS
installation with Xen, so it can do everything you can do with
CentOS/RedHat. As a matter of fact, if you have any shared storage
technology, that would be our recommendation.

We have also successfully installed ModularIT on high available
clusters. This way you install cluster services in the dom0, and run
the virtual machine instances as a cluster service. You can even do
this without any "real" shared storage, using DRBD to mirror volumes
through a LAN connection.

Salu2!
-- 
Miguel Armas <kuko at canarytek.com>
CanaryTek Consultoria y Sistemas SL