Re: Use Cases for server-ansible-roles
I’m to add some items:
Am 26.05.2021 um 23:48 schrieb John W. Himpel
<john(a)jlhimpel.net>:
All,
At today's Fedora Server meeting on IRC, it was requested that we open a thread on
the Server mailing list to provide
use cases. This is my attempt to start that discussion.
Use Case #1:
A small site without an experienced Systems Administrator wishes to host their own email
server. ...
This
would require installing an RPM for a database of choice and making all the necessary
configuration file changes
required to integrate it into the sites MTA/MDA infrastructure.
For a site considering migration from other OS’s to Fedora, completing this process could
take days if not weeks. With
all the old and outdated documentation on the web, it almost becomes a trial and error
situation.
Another problem is that very many (almost all?) completely ignore the structure of the
configuration files that Fedora uses, which makes subsequent updates very difficult. Is
especially noticeable with dovecot.
With carefully
crafted server-ansible-roles, it should be a matter of instructions on how to access the
server-ansible-roles repository
and providing well-documented defaults/main.yml and vars/main.yml files. The unfamiliar
Systems Administrator then only
needs to provide the site-specific values in the Ansible variables files.
Perhaps we should put together one or more types of use cases associated with different
features of the configuration.
One possible type would be the "mail concentrator" which collects mail from one
or more mail service providers and also uses it to send mail. This does not need DKIM and
Co.
Another type would be "small Business / Home user", who needs DKIM and Co, but
no sophisticated user management.
Use Case #4:
If we wanted to be real ambitious, a role for installing and configuring Wildfly (or any
other large complex piece of
software). It could be installed via the provider’s installation method which would
probably include software installed
in /opt that are specific to the individual application. Or we could perhaps develop
server-ansible-roles to download
all the individual component pieces, package them into rpms, submit them to the Fedora
Packaging processes for inclusion
into basic fedora.
It would have to include:
- checking the requirements: appropriate Java version
- maybe additional software, usually a database (postgresql)
- creating the systemd infrastructure
- downloading the software and installing it, probably in /opt
- Managing updates.
I would envision continuing using rpm packages (not coprs and not flatpacks) for basic
software installation. I would
envision a git-like repository maintained by the Fedora Server working group (along with
other stakeholders) to provide
the server-ansible-roles necessary to integrate all of the pieces together. The key to
making all of this work is good,
user-focused, up-to-date documentation on the wiki, web site and in the
server-ansible-roles.
++ to all of these