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From: Chiradeep Vittal <Chiradeep.Vittal@citrix.com>
To: "dev@cloudstack.apache.org" <dev@cloudstack.apache.org>
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2013 18:46:48 -0700
Subject: Re: [DISCUSS] Making simple installs easier.
Thread-Topic: [DISCUSS] Making simple installs easier.
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On 4/23/13 12:15 PM, "Chiradeep Vittal" <Chiradeep.Vittal@citrix.com>
wrote:

>
>
>On 4/21/13 3:21 PM, "David Nalley" <david@gnsa.us> wrote:
>
>>Hi folks.
>>
>>I've been thinking about our install process lately.
>>
>>We currently require folks to muck about with firewall settings, NFS
>>settings, network configuration, etc.
>>This makes configuration painful, our docs VERY platform specific, and
>>easily prone to mistakes which result in failure to get things to
>>work. Even the 'install.sh' from the 3.0.x and earlier days doesn't do
>>enough. What I want to do is get rid of sections 2-4 of the quick
>>install guide, and replace it with - 'run this one or two lines worth
>>of commands' (http://s.apache.org/runbook)
>>
>>My natural reaction was to reach for puppet - but I am not sure that's
>>the right answer. To do things right, I'd need several puppet modules
>>like stdlib, puppetlabs-firewall, etc, which is a fair bit of
>>overhread - and oh, yeah, need to install the puppet client. I think
>>Chef is probably in a similar problem space. I don't want to resort to
>>shell scripts of python - config management tools know the difference
>>between apt and yum, and can still get a package installed with one
>>declaration, same thing with firewall rules. Is something like Ansible
>>or SaltStack a better choice?? I don't see it right now if it is, but
>>I don't have much experience with either of those two.
>>
>>The all-in-one installation process I'd like to see:
>>
>>Install your host OS
>>Install an meta-RPM/Deb that either (installs everything, or
>>alternatively configures a repo - or just installs the repo and the
>>stuff I need to install with)
>>Run a command that activates one of these config tools - configures
>>the machine, installs the packages I need, and gets me to the point
>>where I'm ready to login and go through the beautiful new user gui
>>setup stuff.
>>
>>I still want to keep the documentation around, it's invaluable for
>>experienced users and more complex deployments - but right now it's
>>far too much overhead (probably an hour or two) to get things
>>installed and setup to the point where you are ready to run the
>>'Welcome to CloudStack GUI' if you just want to try CloudStack out.
>>
>>So why am I writing this email instead of diving in and solving this
>>problem? Well honestly, I'd like some external opinions. I want to
>>make sure that I am not seeing a 'nail' simply because I have a hammer
>>in my hand. How can we most easily do this? So - how do we make the
>>'brand-new' user experience much better? We develop a platform for
>>orchestration of complex systems, this should be a solved problem.
>>
>>--David
>
>+1 for the initiative.
>If I look at Apache Hadoop's single node operation documentation[1], it is
>considerably simpler.
>Apache Tomcat installation is also fairly trivial.
>
>[1] http://hadoop.apache.org/docs/stable/single_node_setup.html

Also, I will put in a plug for QuickCloud which should help getting the
first vm up and running even quicker.