vSphere | Cobbler | CFEngine

We supported a large german internet service provider in migrating their data center. Using vSphere and the accompanied Perl SDK we automated the creation of the virtual machines, with Cobbler the installation of the guest operating system and with CFEngine its configuration. The whole chain from creating the virtual machine to having a complete, running service can be automated by software. Now, data centers are no longer installed, configured and administrated - they are programmed. The core principles of software development can now be applied to administration. Test-driven development, continuous integration, testing and staging are now available to systems which were previously hand-crafted. A new installation of the data center on the basis of versioned and tested code is now possible with "one click" and within ten minutes.