Announcing project "RunDeck"

[Alex-SF]

Hello fellow ControlTier users,

In addition to working on ControlTier, I'm working on a new open
source project along with a couple ControlTier developers called
"RunDeck". The goal of this project is a client-less, easy to install
and use command and control server. It's really a spin off or a
promotion of some of ControlTier's most popular features: Jobs and ad-
hoc command execution.

RunDeck shares many ControlTier ideas and its code base was seeded
from ControlTier 3.6. Combine CTL Center, supporting shell tools (ctl-
exec, ctl-queue, ctl-run, ctl-jobs), document formats like job.xml and
a subset of resources.xml, and you can probably envision the RunDeck
footprint. The user interface design should also be quite familiar to
CTL Center users with some improvements, as well.

What's the focus of the RunDeck project?

A particular focus of RunDeck is the further development of the ad-hoc
command execution environment. Any of you that were attracted to
ControlTier's "script-driven approach" will find RunDeck particularly
of interest. We are really excited about two feature areas:

* distributed command prompt: We want to create a dynamic and
powerful interface to filtering and dispatching commands and scripts
to Node sets. We've got all kinds of ideas on how to do this
graphically
* pluggable external data providers: Everyone has existing sources of
data about their environment and process. We want to enable a simple
way of exposing this data to RunDeck

From an admin's standpoint, we want RunDeck to have a small footprint,
running on a single server, without the need to install client
software. For new users, we want to focus on a tool with a small
learning curve with a lighter weight scripting model.

How is RunDeck different from ControlTier?

RunDeck is an evolution of some features of ControlTier into a
standalone service. RunDeck also relies on external services to
provide the Node catalog that ControlTier manages on its own. This
can make it easier to use with existing management tools.
RunDeck is lighter weight and does not use the CTL module programming
framework, it only uses Jobs. RunDeck defines multi-step procedures
using workflow sequences and does not use the granular type/object
resource model, repository and distributed object paradigm. Because of
this, RunDeck relies more heavily on other tools in the chain. We have
also put effort into giving RunDeck an easier install process. The RPM
installer also shows our work on adopting the Linux system standards.
Finally, RunDeck is using a different project hosting service, GitHub.
We like GitHub's social features and excellent git support.

What does RunDeck mean to ControlTier?

In the future, RunDeck could be a drop in replacement for CTL Center
and ctl-exec. This would allow ControlTier to focus on its original
design of being a model-driven automation framework. Your feedback
will help make that decision.

When is RunDeck available?

RunDeck preview builds are available now, and a beta release candidate
will be available soon.
For more information, go to http://rundeck.org