Fedora 8 - A release in review.

[Mike McGrath]

For those on the list that don't actively participate in discussion, 
Fedora Infrastructure uses time-lines roughly related to the releases 
that come out.  This works out well for us as major changes to our 
infrastructure typically are aligned well with a release.  So in saying 
that, here's a quick look back on stuff we did for fedora 8.  This list 
is FAR from exhaustive, but gives a good view:

Fedora 8 Website:  A lot of stuff changed on the Fedora 8 website this 
time around.  Not as drastic of a change as last time in terms of looks, 
but a lot of changes in how we build it.  It has already been translated 
into many languages.  Its been replicated to multiple locations (with 
one or two more to come).  This served us well when PHX fell off the 
planet during our release.

DB1 upgrade:  DB1 was our only DB server for a long time.  We upgraded 
the OS and versions of Postgres and Mysql.  Then split it up into two 
boxes.  One on DB1 (MySQL) and one on DB2 (Postgres).  The two send 
snapshots of eachother around.  Its also worth noting that DB2 is now on 
better hardware and is virtualized and run over iscsi.

Two clicks to live CD:  A simple and obvious thing to do but took 
coordination and work to actually implement.  It has made our systems 
more user friendly and allowed us to completely re-do what 
download.fedoraproject.org is.  Major props to Matt Domsch on that for 
creating the ability in Mirror Manager.

Change Freeze:  We officially had a change freeze this time around.  
Aside from some failed hardware.  It went well.  We're gaining more 
discipline in our infrastructure while still remaining adaptable to 
change.  A tricky task.  But I hope to see more of it during Fedora 9.

Hosted:  We implemented a hosted solution (still not quite "official" 
but being worked on).  Think about hosted for a moment.  We haven't 
announced it and basically word of mouth has made it what it is 
already.  We support multiple source control mechanisms and its 
possibilities are quite limitless. 

Ticketing system:  Otrs is gone,  Trac replaced it.  Hurray!  We 
actually use this system.  Its easy to use and its how I'm getting this 
list of things we completed :) (note to someone that happens upon this.  
OTRS is a great tool, just the wrong tool for our needs)

New backup system:  We're using bacula now instead of backuppc.  Its 
still got some bugs and is in desperate need of a proper storage 
backend.  But it is something we setup and got working.

Package Database:  Toshio wrote a package database where there just was 
none before.  It's very useful and will continue to become more useful 
as we integrate our systems.

fedorapeople.org:  Amazing how popular this turned out to be.  People 
host code, scm's, all sorts of stuff.  Its been quite useful.

Ibiblio mirror:  A small thing but has been useful.  We have an ibiblio 
mirror.  It's proved we can run one outside of Red Hat's control and 
it's even allowed us to fix up some mistakes we made quicker then 
syncing from Phoenix.

Proxy Caching:  Probably one of THE most useful (for Fedora 
Infrastructure) parts of our release this time around has been proxy 
caching.  It has had a major impact on how often our application servers 
actually serve pages.  We've even made things easier on the wiki.

Open Infrastructure: We did do some major reorganization during the F8 
release.  We have more groups then ever, more sponsors then ever and 
more contributors then ever in Infrastructure.  We continue to need to 
expand a bit and harden our actual procedures but the team is strong and 
thats good.

Voip: Our asterisk server was up and running in time for FudCon.  I 
should remind everyone that this went from "nothingness" to an open 
working solution in a matter of days and ready for our virtual fudcon.  
Major props to dgilmore, jcollie and skvidal.  In Fedora 9 we'll build 
some more dedicated boxes to this.  Hopefully it can become a major 
helpful tool for training, meetings, etc.

VPN: In response to our decentralization we've decided to implement a 
vpn solution.  Much of it is in place with more to come as we create 
more machines.

Respins:  spins.fedoraproject.org is up and running.  It's still very 
basic but as we get more time, we'll be implementing more and more as 
our new torrent box comes online.

start.fedoraproject.org:  Well, our end is up anyway :)

translate.fedoraproject.org:  A brand new for us website that, when 
combined with transifex, will allow us to bring our software to more 
people then ever.

maps:  how cool are maps?  http://fedoraproject.org/maps/  We got'em and 
they're great! 

Upgrades  and other stuff:  Even after adding all of this stuff, we've 
made a lot of our current systems better through virtualization and 
upgrades. 

Ok, I'm done.  If there's something I've forgotten that you'd like to 
add.  It's a list, reply!  I'm incredibly happy with all the work we've 
done in the last 6 months.

Stay tuned for the "Fedora 9 - A release in preview".  Start thinking of 
things that are important to you and what you'd like to see done for 
Fedora 9.  We'll discuss it in that thread, then at the next meeting.

    -Mike