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How Do You Manage Dev/Test/Production Environments?

Posted by timothy on from the hotbed-of-hotbeds dept.

An anonymous reader writes "I am a n00b system administrator for a small web development company that builds and hosts OSS CMSes on a few LAMP servers (mostly Drupal). I've written a few scripts that check out dev/test/production environments from our repository, so web developers can access the site they're working on from a URL (ex: site1.developer.example.com). Developers also get FTP access and MySQL access (through phpMyAdmin). Additional scripts check in files to the repository and move files/DBs through the different environments. I'm finding as our company grows (we currently host 50+ sites) it is cumbersome to manage all sites by hacking away at the command prompt. I would like to find a solution with a relatively easy-to-use user interface that provisions dev/test/live environments. The Aegir project is a close fit, but is only for Drupal sites and still under heavy development. Another option is to completely rewrite the scripts (or hire someone to do it for me), but I would much rather use something OSS so I can give back to the community. How have fellow slashdotters managed this process, what systems/scripts have you used, and what advice do you have?"

4 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. You are not a n00b by davidwr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You may be a new system administrator, but you are not a n00b.

    A n00b wouldn't realize he was a n00b.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
    1. Re:You are not a n00b by nametaken · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Or maybe they're not over public internet, or are tunneled, or they're sftp and he just calls it ftp? We dunno.

  2. Re:Separate SVN deploys by Foofoobar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Git does not have integration with Apache and other tools that developers still find useful. TRAC integrates with Subversion as do several other tool. You also cannot coordinate Git with your IDE. Don't get me wrong, it is definitely where version control will be in the future but the tools to support it have to get there first before widespread adoption should be advised for day to day use.

    --
    This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
  3. Re:Most important thing in my book by zztong · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Testing with real data is not necessarily a good practice. Consider sensitive data, such as social security numbers. Auditors may ding your development practices for providing developers access to information they do not need. You need realistic data, not necessarily the real data. If you're bringing real data from prod back to test and dev, consider having something scrub the data.