Announcing Ubuntu Ensemble, mediawiki community feedback requested

[Gustavo Niemeyer]

> Hey, I really appreciate your feedback

Indeed that's great, thanks.

>> Well, you still need to know that you need 4 machines and what is each of
>> them.

Ensemble will automatically assign the workloads and fire as many
machines as necessary, and you can always check to see what is where
at any instant using "ensemble status".

>> I first got confused thinking that they were packages on a single machine.
>
> Currently every service is deployed on a separate cloud machine. Lots of
> changes are planned though (like supporting non-cloud deployments, and
> possibly more than one service per machine)

Yeah, for _sure_ we'll support multiple services per machine.  If
desired, a full deployment will use a single machine, actually.
That's one of the benefits of using Ensemble vs. images: you'll be
able to define how to distribute the services if that's wanted.

>> So, when you add a second demo-wiki, how is the second mediawiki
>> configured? A simple copy ? How are further changes synced?

In addition to what Ahmed said, just to be clear, just to be clear,
the formula author is actually free to design those details as makes
most sense for the use case at hand.  Of course, the ideal approach
will end up being most used, and will be part of the core set of
formulas we'll provide by default.

>> What about optional packages? If you are installing for a large scale
>> cloud deployment of mediawiki you probably also want php-apc, or wikidiff2
>> extension.
>
> Well if you want php-apc, just add it to the apt-get line of the install
> hook. Very soon, formulas will be configurable as well, so having php-apc as

Indeed!

> Thanks! I don't think we should need any modifications to MW (or any other
> package for that matter). At least I hope we don't! Regarding testing and
> tweaking for 1.17, I'd love to do that, however since Ensemble is on its way
> to supporting all cloud deployable software, the only scalable model I can
> see is for the expert community of each respective package to step-up and
> start tweaking the formulas.

Right.  In any case, whatever you need just drop us a note.  We'll be
happy to explain how it works, or even tweak/improve the way it works
if that's necessary.

-- 
Gustavo Niemeyer
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