Jumpbox looks interesting. It takes the “certified opensource” concept from the likes of SourceLabs to the next level. How much easier could setting something up be than to download a virtual image… a virtual appliance.
But my question is “how will the upgrade happen?” This is the single most challenging part of IT right now… versioning and upgrades. I’m going to play around with this a bit at night and see how it flies over the next month or so. Which one will I start with? SVN and TRAC. I did say versioning was important didn’t I?
ps. I know the value of the likes of SourceLabs is the support part. But I got the value from a prebuilt bundle of things
[tags]subversion, development, virtualization, opensource[/tags]
Upgrades are handled by bringing up another instance of the VM exporting the data from one and importing it into the other. This sounds a little cumbersome, but it’s actually a much more robust way of performing an upgrade because it keeps your existing system fully functional while you test the updated system. When you’re confident everything is working you can cut over to the new VM while still keeping the original fully in tact in case you need to switch back. This is a big advantage of using virtualization infrastructure.
Kimbro, Thanks for the comment.
Shortly after posting I actually read through JumpBox’s site some more and found the notion about moving the data as an upgrade mechanism. Totally makes sense, especially if things are in the database. Should work well for my first exploration around SVN and Trac.
Since I run WordPress here, I’m interested in seeing how that plays out. All content is in the database, but styles, themes, plugins are in the file system. How those are handled will be interesting. If it plays out well for the “non-dramatic” upgrade/update, then this alone would justify the kind of $$$ JumpBox is asking (which looks reasonable).
Every “upgrade” has three components (at least): The base system, your data, and your customizations. JumpBox solves the first, sounds like it will get the second one done well, if it hits the third in a decent way… bingo.