Ensemble principles

Ahmed Kamal kim0 at ubuntu.com
Mon May 30 14:07:12 UTC 2011


On 05/25/2011 07:03 PM, Dustin Kirkland wrote:
> On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 9:56 AM, Ahmed Kamal<kim0 at ubuntu.com>  wrote:
>> I would like to start adding more information to the Ensemble website.
>> Starting with the front page, I think it should answer the questions "What
>> is ensemble, and why should I care". As such, I'm trying to define and
>> portray the main principles (selling points if you will) that define
>> Ensemble. Think of it as a slightly longer version of an elevator pitch. I
>> came up with the following list, of course feedback is most welcome! While
>> the current wording is definitely crude, at this stage I'm mostly interested
>> in ideas that you think should be stressed upon.
>>
>> ==
>>
>> - Built for the cloud: Ensemble assumes cloud deployment is the norm, rapid
>> and repeatable configuration is a necessity.<Cloud is not the only
>> deployment target though>. Ensemble completely embraces devOps and
>> Infrastructure as code principles<needs some nice wording>
>> - Holistic Service Management: Core to the Ensemble vision, is managing
>> "services" without worrying about the underlying machines. Getting a
>> multi-machine deployment (such as a complex LAMP stack) requires lots of
>> configuration information to be discovered and shared across the different
>> machines. It also requires the actions to be orchestrated across nodes that
>> are all collaborating for the creation of the service. Ensemble provides the
>> framework to make that work seamlessly and transparently. Just like APT
>> relieved us from worrying about package dependencies, and installation
>> order, Ensemble reliefs from installing the correct packages on certain
>> nodes, copying configuration information back and forth, and tying
>> everything together.
> Hi Ahmed,
>
> To me, this is the most important point at this juncture -- I strongly
> believe that we really, really, really need to focus the taxonomy of
> Ensemble to this new concept of "Service Orchestration", and be very
> vocal about how it's different from traditional "Configuration
> Management".
Thanks everyone for the feedback. I've just pushed most of this text 
after some massaging to the Ensemble front page. The front page is 
currently two main sections, "Ensemble at a glance" a quick overview 
that will be replaced by whatever pitch everyone agrees to. And a more 
detailed section describing Ensemble principles adapted from this 
thread. I've made the orchestration point come first, since indeed as 
Dustin mentioned it's quite important and sets Ensemble apart. if you'd 
like to change anything on that page, just let me know

Thanks, cheers




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