[Web4lib] RE: Web4lib Digest, Vol 23, Issue 1

[Theo van Veen]

Some of your questions may be answered by two articles I wrote (http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march05/vanveen/03vanveen.html <http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march05/vanveen/03vanveen.html>  and
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue47/vanveen/ <http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue47/vanveen/> ) especially with respect to providing a flexible architecture that can accommodate new (and unanticipated!) projects. 
Focus should not only be on your own web services but also on making the web services of others available to your users. For each metadata field, metadata record or object, users should be able to choose services from others to use these fields, records or objects as input. 
 
Theo van Veen

________________________________

Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2007 12:25:16 -0500
From: "Tom Wood" <thomas.a.wood at uconn.edu>
Subject: [Web4lib] high availability web service infrastructure: your
        experiences?
To: <web4lib at webjunction.org>
Message-ID:
        <8C81AA7D3B12F4408C6B3359AEB001CC02719CF8 at LIB-EMarks.library.lib.uconn.edu>
       
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[Apologies to those who received this via LITA-L a few weeks ago.]

We are embarking on a redesign of our Library IT infrastructure, and I'm
looking into our web site/service architecture.  My redesign goals
include:

 * Improving the availability of web delivered services

 * Introducing a development -> staging -> production flow for content
and applications

 * Providing a flexible architecture that can accommodate new (and
unanticipated!) projects

 * Doing this all while spending as little money as possible :-)

While I'm an "old hand" at software, I am but a novice in the library
world and would benefit greatly from your experiences.

So, I would like to tap into the community's experience in building
*high availability* web systems for libraries.  I realize that is a bit
of a broad brush inquiry, so here are some specific questions that may
give you a better idea of what I'm after, specifically about high
availability systems:

  * What sort of high availability architecture do you use?  (e.g.,
clustering, load balancing, etc.)  What is the scope of your
architecture? (e.g., web server, application server, database, etc.)

  * If clustering or load balancing, how do you distribute your web
content to your servers? (e.g., replication/mirroring, network file
system, global file system, etc.)

  * How do you move your content/applications through
development/staging/production?  (e.g., home grown tools, version
control system, content management system, etc.)

  * Do you use a content management system in a high availability
configuration?  Any quirks, words of wisdom, etc.?

Thanks very much!


Tom Wood
thomas.a.wood at uconn.edu
ITS Applications Developer
University of Connecticut Libraries