CSC/ECE 517 Fall 2013/rails infrastructure management tools

Rails Infrastructure Management Tools- Comparison of Puppet and Chef

The Scenario

The scenario we will be using for the purposes of this comparison will be one that is a very prevalent one - a large scale web application infrastructure. We shall assume that the web application under discussion is being developed used Rails though this does not overly affect the infrastructure management - it is equally applicable to other frameworks.

The specific requirements of this sample project are as follows-

• Zero downtime - the website's operation is a critical part of the client's business model. They require that the website should have zero downtime which means the infrastrucutre must handle failures, deployment and maintenance without interrupting the site's operation.

• Large scale - The client anticipates a very high and dynamic load on the site which means the site should adapt to user demand and the infrastructure should be able to handle the required performance.

• System Integration - The project is being built to be integrated with the client's legacy systems and need to integrate with them. The infrastructure must support the connection between these systems.