Description of skill set "Setting Up Drupal Servers"

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This page relates to the Skill sets described in the open curriculum project, and tries to describe one of the skill sets. See this page as a collaborative notebook, and feel free to edit and improve it.

"Setting Up Drupal Servers" is an umbrella skill that could probably be described as "system administration".

Someone with this skill is able to:

  • Use DRUSH effectively
  • Can set up UNIX cron
  • Can install the applications typical in a LAMP stack (Apache HTTPD, MySQL, PHPMyAdmin, PHP)
  • Can provision a database via MySQL
  • Understands and can set up appropriate permissions (UNIX chmod)
  • Understands and can write simple UNIX scripts (BASH)
  • Can edit files on the server (vi, emacs, pico)

For intermediate to advanced skills:

  • Can set up Drupal in other environments
  1. MS Server setup with IIS, PHP Manager, MSSQL database drivers / PDO extensions and supporting PHP modules e.g. FastCGI, etc.)
  2. Oracle setup with Apache, PHP and supporting PDO extensions

Comments

I think you need some well

valeriod's picture

I think you need some well defined use cases to come up with a sensible list of skills.

What I mean is that you go from setting up a Drupal installation on a shared server -- cpanel, plesk or equivalent -- to setting up a cluster on Amazon or RackSpace with a sharded MySQL backend. If you are setting up a development server better set umask to 002, how about installing the GD library on Ubuntu or a proper iptables setup?

Heya there! Thanks v much for

heather's picture

Heya there! Thanks v much for the feedback. We want you to feel welcome to edit the wiki page and add in your changes. I think they sound reasonable. It looks like this particular skill set could have multiple scenarios for which servers need to be set up.

Please do make the changes directly. And no worries, revisions are saved :)

Drupal installations outside LAMP

gurubydesign's picture

Hi there!

I just joined this group and I have to say that this is a very good thing you're pushing through here. :)
I am connected to a company that uses Drupal as a CM framework, and have implemented D7 in an intranet setup with MS Server and IIS7. I thought I'd edit this page to include the skills that we were 'compelled' to acquire to meet the requirements of a client.

I was thinking of adding a box on the Drupal Skill Set diagram named 'Advance Drupal Setup' and moving this list of skills there, but I thought I'd wait for the group's feedback first :)

In my opinion, the skills required to set up Drupal beyond the normal LAMP / WAMP stack are also worth considering, since the number of Drupal enthusiasts and experts who are pitching Drupal CMS to corporate bigwigs are increasing, and these companies (e.g. banks, BPOs) would have enterprise infrastructures in place that they may not readily replace with open-source technologies. Good thing that there are drivers and modules that could bridge this gap in the meantime.

Feedback will be appreciated. Thanks.

Advanced Drupal Setup

florisg's picture

While we are increasing our server skillmap taxonomy i'd love to add a few name spaces:

The (in)ability of an OS to run a proper *AMP stack for basic Drupal is a feature we sometimes have to cope with

Setting Up Drupal Servers would basically be as described above do a Lamp, Mamp, Wamp or XAMP stack.

Do it on iiS / windows Server. Would be a parallel specialization for example MS Gold Drupal.
( it would not be above lamp but a parallel block or perhaps a certificate or emblem )

Serious Server Setup (SSS) or Intermediate Setup would be to do things like:
Varnish on top op *AMP or use NginX (NAMP).
NoSQL databases and or Solr integration.
And of course optimize for the chosen stack

High availability cluster environments with redundancy and high availability proxy should make the last step, i.e. Advanced Drupal Servers or Cloud Drupal

Work smarter, not harder

killer_tilapia's picture

Setting up a drupal development box could a huge hassle or easy as pie depending on how you go about it. Me? I go with the pie.

Assuming that you're on a Windows PC and you are trying to setup a WAMP stack, next time don't. Do this instead. Get VirtualBox and TurnKey Drupal. Pie. Assuming that you're trying to run Drupal on a IIS then get WebMatrix. Easy.

Enterprise environments

gurubydesign's picture

@idevit: It's good that you brought up those details. There are indeed a lot of scenarios involving Drupal systems implementation across varying development and production environments.

@killer_tilapia: Kabayan, I understand where you're getting at. It's true that setting up Drupal development boxes SHOULD be easy. But preparing the production environment and ensuring that the Drupal CMS will work efficiently in that environment is a different beast altogether. Big clients would normally insist on forcing Drupal to run in an existing enterprise IT infrastructure, thus the need for drivers and connectors. Of course, not-so-big companies as clients could be easily convinced to just adapt and carry on to production whatever development environment that the developer will dictate. But this may not be so with clients with layers and layers of policies on information management and security.

Here's a scenario: we have the LDAP Integration module to allow user authentication and authorization to Active Directory , for instance. Now if Drupal would need to connect to AD, chances are that the client we're building the CMS for would have rigid policies in using MS-based systems. This could mean Drupal running in a Windows Server, IIS, and writing to an MS-SQL database server.

Now the skill set required to implement this, in my opinion, should be mapped. Just my 5 'centavos' ;)