Update on some OSL and Working Group Activities

[deborah shaddon]

Hi folks, welcome to CCIWG 2011!!

We began the discussion a few weeks ago on some Infrastructure
activities in support of moving to OSL, in support of the Wilson
Center/Sloan engagement.

Here are some updates I wanted to share on the 'technology' (I'm going
to draft a separate posting to cover some of the way in which some
'governance' of the infrastructure process with OSL, including a SOW,
so save those comments for that post, smile). I'm focusing on the
'core + utility' supporting services for now (so as we do more future
state support, there will be opportunity to revisit this.)

We are still evolving some of this, and Andrew is playing a role to
help fill the gaps with the understanding of the current
environment.

The goal (per a governance decision and discussed more in another
post) to move the labor-support to the OSL with a supported work-
intake structure for changes/enhancements, and have them do the bulk
of administration (while CC folks will focus primarily on content
management), under our guidance and direction. Therefore, we will
look to adapt into their environment if a particular standard is
supported today.

1. Basic environment of the OSL data-center (informational):

* They support a fully opensource VM environment for spinning up
instances of some sites, and is built on Ganeti (http://
code.google.com/p/ganeti/).

* Most databases are already hosted on 'separate' servers (think
farm). CC uses MySQL today for Wordpress and Wiki, and this is one of
the components, they also support PostgreSQL.

* The current OS images they support are Gentoo and CentOS.
CrisisCommons has some on CentOS so will go with this, unless there
are problems (In 6 months they expect Ubantu to be supported, but
currently have no process or knowledge developed around this).

* They do supply hosted email, but really in limited capability (ie,
no IMAP), so it is recommended by many that we remain on gmail. We
are evaluating with Google/Wilson how to upgrade our account from
'free' to 'non-profit/education', and get more support (more on this
later).

2. CC's move to OSL for some 'core' services (and move of
crisiscommons.org domain):

* Lance (OSL) will be setting up a couple VM's (one for wordpress, one
for wiki), to dry-run a move over (in terms of compatability,
conversion, process testing, etc.).

* Andrew (CC) is working with Lance (OSL) to help dry-run the move to
the VM's by creating some tarballs of the current environments and
db's to test the migration. This also serves as an opportunity to
'test out' the move over with an opportunity to document the support
processes. We will look to have unique IP for the VM's, this will
also facilitate testing and we will publish here for all of us.

* This initial shake-out will not include openID integration, although
once built, we can use the environment to do openID integration.

*We will begin leveraging the sup...@osuosl.org email group to engage
in this move and dry-run. Support process being defined.

* Look to offload the crux of Wordpress and MediaWiki administration
and support (as in subdomains, plugins, configurations, monitoring) to
OSL.

* Once we complete goals of dry-run (move, test, integrate, and doc
processes), we will have steps and plan for official migration move,
which shouldn't take a lot of time, but will be planned.

*Will look for some model to define capacity planning and usage
monitoring around our community usage.

3. Requirement for some supporting Core+ services:

*Etherpad - We spoke of limits and need for etherpad environment (not
piratepad). They have this and can set us up on our own domain for
this (ie, etherpad.crisiscommons.org). There are 64 concurrent users
allowed on this instance, and is likely to provide more stability than
the piratepad one.

*OpenID is a first step for some security-id management, but is not
the same as single-signon (SSO) across a set of tools or dashboard.
Many of the OSL community have this requirement and we will look to
engage in an effort to define a best-practice around this, but not out-
of-gate.

*The next-2 key components to work on are: 1) Looking to establish
some key services in support of the community for crisiscamp.org here
once crisiscommons.org has been migrated. The initial state community
portal. 2) content-management/knowledge management (structuring our
content, also will support the portal).

*Other NON-OSL Infra activities in flight: Google non-profit, basecamp
for internal project management (including the Infra items), and
shared-calendar on gmail for internal work coordination.

[Chris Foote (Spike)]

Thanks Deborah!

That all seems splendid!

Spike