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One Drupal to Rule them all !

Hernâni Borges de Freitas@hernanibf / hernani.pt

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About me

• .PT • Technical Team Lead PS• Drupal* many things• Twitter.com/hernanibf• Hernani.pt

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One Drupal to rule them allhttp://buytaert.net/one-drupal-to-rule-them-all

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This presentation

The challenge to manage a platform in Drupal for sites with common business features.oCommon software / common

infrastructure.o Launch new sites and introduce new

features with minimal downtime allowed per site.

o Share content/user data among sites.

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First challenge

• Similar look and feel.• Similar backend / architecture / editorial

experience.• Possible to reuse content / features

“In our university we have old sites for our main departments and projects. We want to start from scratch and rebuild a single experience in Drupal. ”

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First question

What are several sites and what is a single site?

One site == One Drupal site?Many sites == Many Drupal sites?

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Options

Single Drupal site• Same code.• Same database.• Contributed

modules will recognize contexts and create sections inside the site.

• Same infrastructure.

Many Drupal sites• Same code

(possibly with some differences).

• Different databases.

• Same infrastructure / Different infrastructure.

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What’s the best?

It depends of:

- Sites differences.- Shared

properties/info.- Predicted evolution.- Teams responsible

for build/maintain/admin.

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Single Drupal site

Public Website

Maths Department

Sports Deparment

Sections

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Single Drupal site

Solution based: A single Drupal installation. Divided in sections managed by different people. Sections can be created using different modules:

OG Context …

Mostly used for: Webs/Intranets with different sections /

departments. Sections with different publishing workflow.

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Single Drupal site

Better fit for: Content shared amongst several sites. Similar user base / admin workflow. Small differences between sites in terms of

functionality. Similar look and feel.

Mostly used for: Webs/Intranets with different sections / departments. Sites with sections with different publishing workflow.

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Single Drupal site

Example: Organic groups (OG) Groups define sections/sites. Content and users are associated with

groups. Users have different roles and

permissions within the group. Very good integration with views, panels,

rules Good suite of complementary modules

(og_theme, og_menu, workbench_og).

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Many Drupal sites

Public Website

Maths Website

SportsWebsite

Same codebase {

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Many Drupal sites

• Multisite installation• Deployed separately

Solution based: Same code base. Different site installations (database).

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Many Drupal Sites - Multisite

Advantages• One codebase to maintain / update.• Easier to reuse infrastructure.• Lower memory utilization (APC).• Simpler at all levels.

Drawbacks• Single point of failure.• Common maintenance windows.• Harder to maintain differences in code (multiple

versions for same module).

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Many Drupal sites - Different codebasesAdvantages• Can be deployed in different locations.• No single point of failure in infrastructure.• Easier to support differences.

Drawbacks• Harder to manage pushes of code to all sites.• Need for a consistent process to manage

updates of code.• As there can be more differences, harder to test.

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Assuming you select the multiple site route

“Marketing is demanding us to be able to spin up new sites that are limited in functionality but require minimal development time”.

“Operations is asking us for a standard deployment/maintenance process for all of our sites.

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Meet the idea of factory of sites

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Meet the idea of factory of sites• Single codebase/distribution with enough

modules/features allowing customize sites without touching code.

• Limited functionality (less is good).• Easy to spin a new site in few minutes.• Easy to update sites in the factory without

impacting full network.• Easy to grow infrastructure by adding

server nodes where different sites are hosted.

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Solutions working in this space

• Custom solutions• Aegir – Started in 2007• Drupal Gardens – Launched in 2011• Acquia Cloud Site Factory – Launched

in 2013 • Pantheon One – Launched in 2013

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Custom solutions – All the work from scratch• Software (Drupal)

– Custom Drupal distribution with your modules/themes

– Installation profile to configure your new sites.

• Infrastructure– CM tool to provision new servers in your platform

easily. Similar configuration between servers.– Several environments ready (Dev->Staging->Prod)

• Management service – Provision new sites and maintain existing ones.– Deployment tools to deploy code from a central

location.

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Custom solutions

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Custom solutions• Everything should be created automatically:

– Sites components - Databases, disk directories and virtual hosts:

– Server configuration - Config management (CM) tools to provision and configure services (puppet/chef..)

– Site installation - Drush site-install can install new (multi)sites.

– Code Deployment - Capistrano / Drush deploy / Custom scripts

– Management server – Controlling all the sites (Custom)

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Aegir

• Community project to control Drupal hosting.

• Open source, Self Hosted.• Hostmaster controls the websites in

the network.• Aegir is responsible for controlling

code deployment, database creation, vhost changes.

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Aegir Good• Simple networks / small sites.• It can be self hosted.

Drawbacks• Using a Drupal site to manage infrastructure is tricky.• Install and configure Aegir is not straightforward.• Deploy code to several servers is challenging.• Migrating sites involves copy all the database, files

and code and swap the vhost (Hard to scale for larger sites).

• Hard to support the concept of several environments.

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Drupalgardens.com

• Software as a Service (SaaS). Freely available !• One distribution (gardens) provides a rich

editing experience (D7).– Rich field types (Link, Date, Field Collection),

Wysiwyg, Media, Theme editor, WebForms– Create content through the Drupal Gardens iPhone

app.

• Multisite installation. • Hosted in Amazon Web Services (AWS), easy

to grow and allocate more machines to the cluster.

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Drupalgardens.com

• SSO using OpenId. Accounts controlled in the gardener site.

• Not possible to add any code.• No vendor lock-in. Possible to export

code/db/files.• Pricing depending on features

enabled and bandwith consumed.

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Acquia Cloud Site Factory

• Several distributions are available (gardens, commons, commerce). New ones can be created.

• Control Panel (Site Factory) controls all sites in the network.

• Code is controlled from a GIT repository.• Two environments are created

(production/sandboxes).• Sites are created directly in production.

Sites can be cloned in sandbox for testing.

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Acquia Cloud Site Factory

• SaaS– Support and SLA on the software. Several

distributions available

• SaaS+– Support and SLA on the software. Client can add

code audited by us.

• PaaS – Support on the platform. Client can add any

code to the platform.

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Acquia Site Factory

• Freedom to customize it to your needs with your code.

• All features associated with Acquia Cloud – Scalable with suupport included.

• Powering the largest networks of Drupal websites in the world.

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Demo

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We are hiring!

• Consultants • Support• Sales• Engineering

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Questions?

@hernanibf / hernani.pt