Changing The Group To "Mercury"

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joshk's picture

As some of you may have seen, we've officially announced the creation of Pantheon Systems, Inc and our plans to deliver a Platform as a Service (PaaS) solution for Drupal. We're super-excited about this, and hope to solve a lot of the hard problems that surround the Drupal space in the next year.

However, it's not appropriate for a company to have a Drupal group, and the open-source work on this project continues with Pantheon Systems as a contributor. As such, we've decided to restore the group name to the original "Mercury".

Updates to the open-source/DIY script for setting up the Mercury stack will be coming in the next few weeks, as we work with Boztek and others to get something stable. After that we can start to think about new StackScripts for Linode, AMI's for EC2, and possibly a VirtuualBox image.

Are there other places you'd like to see Mercury available? Other questions you have about the transition? Feel free to post questions here and I'll do my best to answer.

Comments

Great News!!

zoon_unit's picture

Thanks for making this script available to the community! I am a current user of the "customized" version 1.2 stackscript that has been floating around and it works. I also visited your talks about Pantheon at Drupalcon.

Could you elucidate a bit more on the direction and intent of Mercury?

1) Roughly, how much of the bulk of the script can be stripped out that is exclusive to Pantheon? In other words, should we expect a significantly simpler script? What will be the basic elements?

2) Where will the script be hosted?

3) Just how much customization work is needed to make the open source stackscript specific to a particular VPS or cloud?

4) How well will it work with Drupal 7?

5) Will it likely be a few weeks or a few months. :-)

1.) For the most part, our

aaronlevy's picture

1.) For the most part, our thinking is that the open-source Mercury scripts would setup the same general stack (varnish, apache, memcache, apc, solr, pressflow, etc). However, we would also bring back local installations of the bcfg2-server (we used to do this before switching to a central bcfg2 for 'Pantheon' servers). This would allow people better control over their standalone servers as they could modify their local configs. There would be a fair amount of code that could be removed, as it is unrelated / unnecessary for standalone servers. However, the general installation / management scripts would be nearly the same initially.

One thing we would like some feedback on, however, is if people still want Jenkins/Hudson to still be installed by default. For Pantheon servers we make heavy use of Jenkins for executing and tracking jobs/tasks. However, for a standalone server we are wondering if people would prefer the smaller memory footprint without Jenkins/Hudson and instead execute tasks directly on the command line (these would be documented). For what it's worth, if Jenkins is removed, a fair bit more code can be removed as well, and there would be fewer configs to manage in bcfg2.

2.) Github probably?

3.) This really depends on the VPS / Cloud provider. Linode, for example, doesn't differ all that much so only a few minor modifications are usually needed. However, AWS on the other hand has all kinds of intricacies that don't exist on other cloud providers and will require more customization. We hope that with a stable open-source mercury starting point, others in the community can contribute to the project supporting alternative providers (as boztek has done with linode).

4.) The mercury scripts currently support Drupal 7. Some of the contrib modules are still in dev (solr, memcache) or need to be updated for 7 (varnish). Other than that, the project is still following community best practices around Drupal hosting, and from what I've seen D7 runs really well :)

5.) We are aiming for a few weeks. I've already started a bunch of code cleanup and a bit of testing (although I'm about to be gone for a week, so there will be some delay there). Initially, this will not be so different from what is already available on github. The biggest changes are going to be bringing back the local bcfg2 server, then cleaning up unnecessary code -- at least thats the short-term goal.

Thanks Aaron

zoon_unit's picture

That is exactly the feedback I was hoping for.

The Hudson question is a good one. On one hand, it's extremely valuable to have a small/lean installation allowing a Mercury stack to run well on a 512mb Linode slice. I know a lot of us experimenters have used Linode because it gives us a good low cost server option that is simple.

On the other hand, I can see a HUGE potential for Hudson to automate many of the mundane operations we typically do on a server slice. I could see its potential immediately.

So, it's a battle between economy of resources vs. convenience and power.

I don't know how complicated it would be, but in an ideal world, you would split the Hudson install into a separate, optional script. That way, developers could go for a lean and mean Mercury install, or add Hudson functionality for larger sites where the automation will be of great advantage. If forced to make a choice between the two, I'd likely opt for the lean and mean, sans Hudson option.

And for what it's worth, I think you guys are wise to make Mercury available and powerful. Far from competing with Pantheon, I think you will be grooming an army of Mercury enthusiasts who, once successful on their own projects, will want to move to a semi-managed solution like Pantheon, especially since they will be familiar and comfortable with the layout.

I know, in my case, I have three web projects that I'm developing. They will all require high traffic capability, but since I don't know which (if any) of my ideas will "take," I'm limited in funds for hosting. The option to try all three in a low cost Mercury environment allows me to market-test all three. If one of them "hits," I will be far too busy to manage my own site and I will be coming to you guys for hosting.

My main question is on

Macronomicus's picture

My main question is on pressflow7 I see there's been a massive amount of work done in git, anyone using that yet? Or are there still some remaining major bits? I couldn't find a standing list of p7 issues in launchpad or git so im just curious how much remains?

+1 for the ec2 images I just love those!
That VirtualBox offering sounds great... I use vbox for local deving.

Congrats on the evolution of pantheon, wish you the best of luck and prosperity!

Cheers!

Pressflow 7 will be built on git

joshk's picture

So it won't call launchpad home.

I don't know where David is planning to finally locate Pressflow 7. The main focus is on distributed rendering and ESI, and on supporting better field-storage/views back ends (E.g. cassandra/volt/hive). This will allow better scale for sites that have a lot of logged in users.

I had looked around that git

Macronomicus's picture

I had looked around that git pressflow7 (public) stuff but wasnt sure about whats there, thats why I asked. I'm just excited thats all... lol sorry I cant contain myself... often.

That sounds very interesting about the field-storage stuff! I figured ESI since D7 doesn't support it.

Googled Pressflow + "distributed rendering" and found OMG yafaray? Very interesting... I have been thinking about a blender rendering setup in amazon.

Im looking forward to hearing about it when the time comes.

Cheers!

Are updates to the StackScript forthcoming?

rhawkins's picture

Hey Josh,

Are you planning to update the StackScript to work with Drupal 7? Aaron Livy seems to indicate the Mercury script works with D7 now but I couldn't find the update.

Thanks!

Planned for the future

rhawkins's picture

I just caught up with some folks on the Pantheon IRC channel and sounds like an update to the installation profile or configuration management scripts is forthcoming, however I did not get a date.

If you're looking to install Varnish with Drupal 7, it's pretty simple to just install Varnish and use the Four Kitchens VCL file. I installed Varnish 3.02 which worked with the existing VCL file.

Mercury

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