Puppet Configuration Review - Jan 2017

Notes and actions from a review of the Puppet configuration for Timetabling, ahead of delivering the Web Apps Rollforward

Based on Outline of Puppet tasks - from email from David Mcnicol - on 18-Jan 2017 - Status of Timetabling web application deployment

(Tasks subsequently re-ordered , and tasks added as part of the IS Apps mtg on Mon 23-Jan 2017)

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Summary of the progress that has been made with the Web Applications roll forward and the status of the Puppet automation and version control in the process.

David Mcnicol's understanding of status and out-standing tasks:

. On DEV, Puppet has been turned off, the 17/18 web applications have been deployed manually and the new version of the WRB is deployed manually.

. On TEST, Puppet is still on and is managing 16/17 web applications. The 17/18 web applications have been deployed manually. The new WRB is available on the file system but is not being used.

. On LIVE, Puppet is still on and is managing 16/17 web applications.

. Production Management may have made some changes to the 16/17 web applications in LIVE on the file system. Puppet will not have overwritten the changes because we have not committed anything new to the ‘production’ branches in the web application repositories.

We want to deliver the web applications as quickly as possible but also in a consistent manner. What we propose to do is:

1. Remove the 16/17 configuration from Puppet (David McN)

This will mean that all of the 16/17 web application code on the DEV, TEST and LIVE server will remain in place and will not be affected by changes to Puppet or the web application repositories.

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2. Remove the manually created 17/18 web apps from TEST and redeploy using Puppet (David McN)

Tidy up Puppetmaster on IS Apps GIT server ( GIT IS) , migrate Puppet parts to GIT ITI Puppetmaster (0.5d)  

This will give us a set of web applications on TEST  that have been built from the repositories, which we can test and make sure that the outstanding JIRAs relating to week numbers etc are resolved.

Review  the TTU Web Apps Puppet module  documentation - what is under Puppet control and what is not? (not essential for Web Apps rollforward) - meeting

3. Get Timetabling Unit to re-test in 17-18 TEST - 0.5d ( Steph Ruthven to co-ordinate testing tasks)

4.  Deploy 17/18 Web Apps  on LIVE using Puppet -(David McN) - either on Thurs 26-Jan or Mon 30-Jan 

two tasks :

4.A - Build Web app images ( DONE - built already on LIVE by Mark Dobbing)

4.B - Switch on Puppet for 17-18 LIVE (0.5d) 

This will give us a known version of the web applications  on LIVE.

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5. Backport production changes into the web application repos

joint Dev Tech / Production work - David McN / Mark McG / Brian D. - go through each change toegther

If Production Management are aware of changes that have been made on LIVE to the file system, we can work together to commit them into the relevant web app repositories. As those commits are made, the 17/18 versions of the web applications across TEST and LIVE will be updated automatically by Puppet.

6.  TTU013 Commit the new version of the WRB into the WRB repository and add the updated configuration files to Puppet. (2d - David McN & Mark D) 

This will enable us to do automated deployments of the new version of WRB.

7. Review any outstanding decommissioning tasks for the old 14-15 and 15-17 academic years

This will leave us with a consistent web application build for 17/18 across TEST and LIVE that is being managed from the repositories without risking the loss of any manual changes to 16/17 web apps.

AOB

The local IS Apps puppetmaster config / tasks will move to the new ITI Puppetmaster server - to bring the Timetabling Puppet config in line with other Puppet services

If there is resource available we can do additional work on DEV to do an automated redeployment of 17/18. Similarly the 16/17 web applications will continue to be managed manually unless we find resource to do an automated redeployment.

for 16/17 , there will need to be a manual weekly task to change the Week Allocations each Wed until Puppet is turned back on 16-17 , this is a driver to quickly turn Puppet back on for 16/17 

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