At the company I work, we have a product that for all intents and purposes could be called consultingware. It's a platform for EDI with quite a few moving parts. The back-end is an ESB written in Java SE, the front-end is a Java EE application running on GlassFish, the database is typically on an MSSQL server and RabbitMQ is used as queueing middleware. It's domain-agnostic in the sense that different message models and mappings can be deployed. Setting up a new environment tends to take quite a while, but a lot of it are mundane tasks that could easily be automated by filling in the right parameters and running scripts. T-SQL for the database, asadmin scripts on GlassFish, and the ESB configs are XML, so an XSLT transformation on a template would do the job.
This is never going to become a simple installation, but having an "installer" that does most of the work for you, lists prerequisite steps, presents the user with a convenient way of supplying necessary parameters, generating some scripts and putting things in place would be nice; even if only the devs ever use it, it would make life easier. Although the software is technically platform-independent, it tends to be run on Windows Server.
Just making a Java application that does the above wouldn't be very difficult, but rather than reinvent the wheel (and make a probably very ugly GUI) I'd like to see if any existing solutions fit the bill. InstallShield and Inno Setup look promising. So the question is, which existing tool could provide the following, or alternatively, is making something from scratch worth it?
Call other executables or installers (for GlassFish, for example).
Run shell scripts (for the asadmin setup).
Connect to a (MSSQL) database and run scripts.
Perform XSLT transformations (could be via a Java method call/jar execution).
Set up services.
Maybe have some way of checking if prerequisites are fullfilled (check if GlassFish is installed, RabbitMQ, DB is accessible...)
FWIW, you can do all of those things from an MSI. There are a number of tools out there that make the process easier. I use a free one called MAKEMSI that is excellent: http://dennisbareis.com/makemsi.htm
Related
So I've been agonizing over embracing a deployment/configuration management tool like Chef or Puppet for a good long while. Not because I have any hesitation about them in general, but because I don't think they are a good fit for our specific scenario.
As far as I can see, these types of tools are targeted at frequent/wide-scale deployments, where you need to roll out software to 10s-1000s of systems. In our environment, we have a collection of ~25 different web services spread across half a dozen runtimes, with 1-8 deployments of each in production currently. Our big deployment problem is that each of the services has a different deployment story, and it's entirely manual, so it tends to be time consuming and error prone. Another wrinkle is that different instances in production may be different versions of the software, so we may need to concurrently support multiple deployment stories for a single service.
So I feel like we need something more like Ant/Maven/Rake, which is customized for each service. However, my experience with those is they are generally focused on local operations, and specific to a given language/runtime.
Is there a runtime-agnostic framework for describing and orchestrating building/testing/deployment in the manner I'm interested in?
I'm sure if I hit them long enough, I could get Rake or Puppet to do these for me, but I'm looking for something built for this purpose.
(Oh, and to make things worse, everything runs on Windows)
Thanks!
Here's another alternative you might want to consider: kwatee (I'm affiliated) is a free lightweight deploiement tool which besides having a web management interface can also integrate with ant (or maven or anything else with python CLI) to automate build & deploiement on dev/test environments for instance.
One of the nice things is the web configuration interface which make it pretty easy to quickly configure your deploiment stories, i.e. which software/version goes on which server. It's often necessary to setup different parameters in configuration files depending on the target server. For that you can "templatize" your packages using kwatee variable (similar to environment variables) which are configured with different values for each server.
Software must be registered in Kwatee's repository in the form of a folder of files, or an archive (zip, tar, tar.gz, bzip2, war) or a single file (e.g. an exe). Msi's are not supported. To deploy on windows kwatee needs the servers to have either telnet/ftp or ssh/scp (there are free tools out there).
I have a custom build and deployment script which work over SSH and deploy to servers (on running MacOS). The bash script does a lot of simple things like copying files, backing up the old ones and applying the correct SQL scripts for a forward moving database. But there are some advanced things like starting a remote SQL upgrade procedure which can be disconnected from and once the deployment script is started again it only goes forward if the SQL script has been applied completely (in short there is some flow control happening and bash is not really ideal for such stuff)
The script is already huge and is a mess since bash is not meant for such kind of detailed logic. Can you recommend some tools, libraries which would make things easier.
For what you tell us, I think you need a deployment tool, rather than a configuration management tool.
To simplify, I'll distinguish the two like this:
A deployment tool is a 'push' tool: When you press the button, the required actions are run to make the deployment. It's a one-step process (it can have multiple actions, but it's launched once).
A configuration management tool is usually a 'pull' tool, where your servers periodically check if their configuration is exactly as the CM server tells them to be - and apply changes, if needed. You configure your servers once, and after that the system assures that all is as it should be. It is also a great tool to easily clone systems.
For deployment tools, I personally know Fabric, a great Python tool. But there is also Capistrano in the Ruby world. I don't know of any others.
For CM tools, Puppet and Chef seem to be the preferred choice of people nowadays. Cfengine is an older tool, which had some problems (I don't know if that has changed).
Here are my recommendations:
Puppet
Chef
cfengine
These are all free (as in beer) and allow you to do what you're wanting. They will require you to adapt your current bash script into modules to fit their design/framework. It's a bit of work, but in the long run it tends to be better since the frameworks take care of error checking, converging configurations and a lot of other things you'd have to manually insert into your own code were you doing this yourself.
I've also used Opsware previously for this sort of thing, but that costs a fair bit of cash and, for what you're trying to do, does not offer significantly more benefit.
In some cases moving from a bash-script to an complete solution is not as straightforward as many cloudservices claim.
With 'dont try new things when your on a deadline' in mind:
it could also be a good timing to refactor your bashscripts.
I have done automated, repeatable deployments in the past using PaaS or just using GIT/SVN hooks using deployogi (which is bash) : https://github.com/coderofsalvation/deployogi
I understand your situation, but Im not sure whether its fair to say that the bash-language implies 'a mess' and 'complex'.
Every language allows to hide complexity no?
I guess code (in whatever language) gets overly complex when time does not allow us to refactor :)
PaaS is great. But always needed? I think not.
I'm looking for some comparison between Quartz.NET and Windows Scheduled Tasks?
How different are they? What are the pros and cons of each one? How do I choose which one to use?
TIA,
With Quartz.NET I could contrast some of the earlier points:
Code to write - You can express your intent in .NET language, write unit tests and debug the logic
Integration with event log, you have Common.Logging that allows to write even to db..
Robust and reliable too
Even richer API
It's mostly a question about what you need. Windows Scheduled tasks might give you all you need. But if you need clustering (distributed workers), fine-grained control over triggering or misfire handling rules, you might like to check what Quartz.NET has to offer on these areas.
Take the simplest that fills your requirements, but abstract enough to allow change.
My gut reaction would be to try and get the integral WinScheduler to work with your needs first before installing yet another scheduler - reasoning:
no installation required - installed and enabled by default
no code to write - jobs expressed as metadata
integration with event log etc.
robust and reliable - good enough for MSFT, Google etc.
reasonably rich API - create jobs, check status etc.
integrated with remote management tools
security integration - run jobs in different credentials
monitoring tooling
Then reach for Quartz if it doesn't meet your needs. Quartz certainly has many of these features too, but resist adding yet another service to own and manage if you can.
One important distinction, for me, that is not included in the other answers is what gets executed by the scheduler.
Windows Task Scheduler can only run executable programs and scripts. The code written for use within Quartz can directly interact with your project's .NET components.
With Task Scheduler, you'll have to write a shell executable or script. Inside of that shell, you can interact with your project's components. While writing this shell code is not a difficult process, you do have to consider deploying the extra files.
If you anticipate adding more scheduled tasks over the lifetime of the project, you may end up needing to create additional executable shells or script files, which requires updates to the deployment process. With Quartz, you don't need these files, which reduces the total effort needed to create and deploy additional tasks.
Unfortunately, Quartz.NET job assemblies can't be updated without restarting the process/host/service. That's a pretty big one for some folks (including myself).
It's entirely possible to build a framework for jobs running under Task Scheduler. MEF-based assemblies can be called by a single console app, with everything managed via a configuration UI. Here's a popular managed wrapper:
https://github.com/dahall/taskscheduler
https://www.nuget.org/packages/TaskScheduler
I did enjoy my brief time of working with Quart.NET, but the restart requirement was too big a problem to overcome. Marko has done a great job with it over the years, and he's always been helpful and responsive. Perhaps someday the project will get multiple AppDomain support, which would address this. (That said, it promises to be a lot of work. Kudos to he and his contributors if they decide to take it on.)
To paraphrase Marko, if you need:
Clustering (distributed workers)
Fine-grained control over triggering or misfire handling rules
...then Quartz.NET will be your requirement.
Hi I would like to know how many of you have used Workflow in your production environment and Was it good idea? I mean we can create the same thing using DB and scheduler service
We use WF in our production enviorments. We have 6 different workflows that can be run. These split into 3 statemachine and 3 sequences. I would use it again in some circumstances, but I would not in others. I would claim that the statemachine part of the workflow was tacked on the end quickly, I'm not sure it a core part of the workflow all the way through design.
I would use workflow again for short running processes like quotes or transforming things before sending them to supliers that kind of thing.
I would not want to do it again for a long running statemachine - mainly because there is not a built in WF upgrade process so we ended up writing our own. There are also a lot of concepts to get your head around (affectionalty known as gypsy curses with in our development team).
I would also be slightly concerned about performance: our App server is currently running flat out (ok I am restarting 8000 workflows at the moment). This is especially a problem if you integrate it directly into WCF using the (.NET 3.5) send and recieve activities - there are some properly crazy config settings you have to set to allow it run multiple workflows at once.
Anyway, as I said: it is useful, I would use it again, but not for another statemachine.
Also see Please confirm: Is Windows Workflow Foundation a good horse to be backing right now?
We use Sharepoint, which uses WF for its workflows. It works pretty well and is fairly easy to customize. If you need an advanced workflow, WF can support it but it will take some training to learn the ins and outs.
You could roll your own workflow, but why reinvent the wheel? WF is built into the .NET 3.0+ framework and is pretty robust, so you might as well take advantage of it.
Most people say all the good things about Workflows but I have observed that they introduce unnecessary code complexity and maintenance problems. They are suitable for a particular class of problems. other then that they need a lot of code plumbing and maintenance nightmares.
I work in a very small shop (2 people), and since I started a few months back we have been relying on Windows Scheduled tasks. Finally, I've decided I've had enough grief with some of its inabilities such as
No logs that I can find except on a domain level (inaccessible to machine admins who aren't domain admins)
No alerting mechanism (e-mail, for one) when the job fails.
Once again, we are a small shop. I'm looking to do the analogous scheduling system upgrade than I'm doing with source control (VSS --> Subversion). I'm looking for suggestions of systems that
Are able to do the two things outlined above
Have been community-tested. I'd love to be a guinae pig for exciting software, but job scheduling is not my day job.
Ability to remotely manage jobs a plus
Free a plus. Cheap is okay, but I have very little interest in going through a full blown sales pitch with 7 power point presentations.
Built-in ability to run common tasks besides .EXE's a (minor) plus (run an assembly by name, run an Excel macro by name a plus, run a database stored procedure, etc.).
I think you can look at :
http://www.visualcron.com/
Consider Cygwin and its version of "cron". It meets requirements #1 thru 4 (though without a nice UI for #3.)
Apologize for kicking up the dust here on a very old thread. But I couldn't disagree more with what's been presented here.
Scheduled tasks in Windows are AWESOME (a %^#% load better than writing services I might add). Yes, not without limitations. But still extremely powerful. I rely on them in earnest for a variety of different things.
If you even have a slight grasp on c# you can write as custom "task" (essentially a console application) to do, well, virtually anything. If persistent/accessible logging is what you're after, why not something like Serilog or NLog? Even at the time of writing, it had a very robust feature set. This tool in and of itself, in conjunction with some c#, could've solved both your problems very easily.
Perhaps I'm missing the point, but it seems to me that this isn't really a problem. At least not anymore...
If you're looking for a free tool there is plenty of implementations for the popular Cron tool for Windows, for example CRONw. It's pretty easy to configure and maintain. You could easily write add custom WSH scripts to send your emails and add log entries.
If you're going commercial way BMC Control-M is arguably one of the best but I don't believe that it is particularly cheap.
You may also consider some upcoming packages like JobScheduler
Pretty old question, but we use Jenkins. Yes its main purpose is for CI\CD, but its also a really nice UI for CRON with a ton of plugins and integrations.