[rt-users] RT VMWare appliance

[Joop van de Wege]

On Thu, 23 Mar 2006 12:39:14 -0600
Les Mikesell <les at futuresource.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 2006-03-23 at 08:34, Joop van de Wege wrote:
> > > 
> > I finally managed to finish my work on this and have the ubuntu.7z to a
> > size of 380Mb. This expands to a VMWare image of 2.5Gb. 
> > This includes:
> > - Ubuntu installed in "server" mode
> > - Apache-2.0.54 mod_perl-2.0.1 Perl-5.8.7
> > - RT-3.4.5
> > - OracleXE
> > - Sendmail-8.13.4-3, configured rt(-comment) email alias
> > - gcc and related packages.
> > 
> > I might install RTFM (svn) and AT to make it a complete package,
> > everything else can be done by the end user.
> 
> Would it be difficult to modify this to use mysql or postgresql
> on a different host?  That is, if someone tries the virtual
> machine and likes it, would they be able to point the database
> connection at a non-virtual machine for better performance
> and run it in production?
Yes, with a bit of work this can be done. All the tools are available,
the VM is configured to use bridging and DHCP so it can connect to the
internet and download the neccessary components, they are not installed
because of space considerations and <shameless plug on> because I would
like to promote Oracle(XE) together with RT, backed by our business
</shameless plug off>.

In my testing I didn't see much difference except ofcourse when you're
database is on a signifcant faster machine which is exclusivly used for
RT and nothing else.
But then maybe one shouldn't use virtualisation anyway and go for the
bare metal thing instead.
Nice thing about VM is that you can keep a working version zipped away
and restore it on any machine capable of running VMWare or other
compatible virtualisation software. If you have a solid backup/restore
procedure you should be up and running after a disaster in literally
minutes. 
I could configure this VM, using OracleXE, to be redundant in a couple
of ways so that you would miss probably not one transaction in case of
disaster. Interested?;-)

Joop
PS:
One thing I forgot to mention is that his VM has a patched SearchBuilder
which will use Oracle Text searching on ticket content, which means that
you don't have to wait minutes for a search on ticket contents ;-)


-- 
Joop van de Wege <JoopvandeWege at mococo.nl>