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Posted to users@felix.apache.org by Jim Talbut <Ji...@groupgti.com> on 2011/05/03 17:52:35 UTC

Recommended approach for consistent deployment

Hi,

I'm just starting out on the OSGi road and what bothers me is that the complete flexibility offered by OSGi makes it difficult to ensure that every deployed instance is identical.
With a pair of live instances and innumerable test instances I need to have a way to deploy the whole shebang (felix, karaf, camel, CXF, spring, my bundles, various configuration files) in a consistent way.
What tools/techniques to people use to do this?

Thanks

Jim

Re: Recommended approach for consistent deployment

Posted by Allen Lau <al...@gmail.com>.
Have you considered building a package/distribution yourself with all the
bundles and configuration files included?
That way, your are in complete control and can ensure that what ever you
deploy will at least initially have everything that you intended and is
completely reproducible.


On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 8:52 AM, Jim Talbut <Ji...@groupgti.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm just starting out on the OSGi road and what bothers me is that the
> complete flexibility offered by OSGi makes it difficult to ensure that every
> deployed instance is identical.
> With a pair of live instances and innumerable test instances I need to have
> a way to deploy the whole shebang (felix, karaf, camel, CXF, spring, my
> bundles, various configuration files) in a consistent way.
> What tools/techniques to people use to do this?
>
> Thanks
>
> Jim
>

Re: Recommended approach for consistent deployment

Posted by Guillaume Nodet <gn...@gmail.com>.
If you use Karaf, Karaf has a bunch of helpers for pax-exam for
writing integration tests.  We use that internally in karaf.

On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 11:14, Jim Talbut <Ji...@groupgti.com> wrote:
> Marcel (and others),
>
> Thanks for the suggestions.
>
> My problem is that I need to ensure that I can quickly (and automatically) produce a test environment that is the same as a live karaf instance.
> Given that I also need to be able to zap it and start again the simplest solution ought to be the maven-pax-plugin, but I can't get Pax Runner to produce an environment identical to a standalone Karaf instance.
>
> File Install and shell commands are not ideal because of the need to zap it and start again with a precisely known configuration (I'd need to write code to start/stop/clean the environment).
>
> Apache ACE ought to be the ideal tool for managing live environments, but it's not ready for release yet (I couldn't get the version I checked out to actually deploy anything).
>
>
> So I think that the correct approach is a combination of pax-runner (for test) and ACE (for live), but neither is quite able to do what I need right now.
> Does anyone have a platform definition file for Pax runner that produces an environment identical to the out of the box Karaf?
>
> Thanks
>
> Jim
>
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-- 
Cheers,
Guillaume Nodet
------------------------
Blog: http://gnodet.blogspot.com/
------------------------
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Connect at CamelOne May 24-26
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RE: Recommended approach for consistent deployment

Posted by Jim Talbut <Ji...@groupgti.com>.
Marcel (and others),

Thanks for the suggestions.

My problem is that I need to ensure that I can quickly (and automatically) produce a test environment that is the same as a live karaf instance.
Given that I also need to be able to zap it and start again the simplest solution ought to be the maven-pax-plugin, but I can't get Pax Runner to produce an environment identical to a standalone Karaf instance.

File Install and shell commands are not ideal because of the need to zap it and start again with a precisely known configuration (I'd need to write code to start/stop/clean the environment).

Apache ACE ought to be the ideal tool for managing live environments, but it's not ready for release yet (I couldn't get the version I checked out to actually deploy anything).


So I think that the correct approach is a combination of pax-runner (for test) and ACE (for live), but neither is quite able to do what I need right now.
Does anyone have a platform definition file for Pax runner that produces an environment identical to the out of the box Karaf?

Thanks

Jim

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Re: Recommended approach for consistent deployment

Posted by Marcel Offermans <ma...@luminis.nl>.
Hello Jim,

On 3 May 2011, at 17:52 , Jim Talbut wrote:

> I'm just starting out on the OSGi road and what bothers me is that the complete flexibility offered by OSGi makes it difficult to ensure that every deployed instance is identical.
> With a pair of live instances and innumerable test instances I need to have a way to deploy the whole shebang (felix, karaf, camel, CXF, spring, my bundles, various configuration files) in a consistent way.
> What tools/techniques to people use to do this?

There are several options:

 - Pax Runner if you want to run an OSGi framework with a configurable set of bundles, but don't need to update them once the framework is running.
 - Apache Felix File Install, also used in Apache Karaf, to deploy a configurable set of bundles and configuration data based on a folder. Changes you make to the folder are "hot deployed".
 - Apache Felix OBR Shell, which can be used to install bundles and their dependencies based on a (remote) bundle repository.
 - Apache ACE, a software provisioning server that allows you to manage many targets and install and update bundles and configuration data to them automatically.

I'm sure I've missed some (outside of Apache).

Greetings, Marcel


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Re: Recommended approach for consistent deployment

Posted by mv...@comcast.net.

Jim, 



You should consider the use of provisioning via features.xml files for the consistent deployment of bundles into an instance of Karaf. Then, you can use Apache ACE to manage a consistent deployments among multiple instances of Karaf. 



Mike Van 


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jim Talbut" <Ji...@groupgti.com> 
To: users@felix.apache.org 
Sent: Tuesday, May 3, 2011 11:52:35 AM 
Subject: Recommended approach for consistent deployment 

Hi, 

I'm just starting out on the OSGi road and what bothers me is that the complete flexibility offered by OSGi makes it difficult to ensure that every deployed instance is identical. 
With a pair of live instances and innumerable test instances I need to have a way to deploy the whole shebang (felix, karaf, camel, CXF, spring, my bundles, various configuration files) in a consistent way. 
What tools/techniques to people use to do this? 

Thanks 

Jim