1. Introduction

This chapter introduces the system administration policies, methodology for configuration file management, automated installation and configuration of DIMS components using Ansible, and use of continuous integration mechanisms used for deployment and testing of DIMS components.

This document is closely related to the DIMS Developer Guide v 1.0.0, which covers a number of related tasks and steps that will not be repeated here (rather, will be cross-referenced using intersphinx links.)

• All documentation for the DIMS project is written using restructured text (reST) and Sphinx. Section Documenting DIMS Components of the DIMS Developer Guide v 1.0.0 covers how to use these tools for producing professional looking and cross-referenced on-line (HTML) and off-line (PDF) documentation.
• DIMS software – including Ansible playbooks for installation and configuration of DIMS system components, Packer, Vagrant, and Docker subsystem creation scripts, are all maintained under version control using Git and the HubFlow methodology and tool set. Section Source Code Management with Git of the DIMS Developer Guide v 1.0.0 covers how these tools are used for source code, documentation, and system configuration files.
• Changes to source code that are pushed to Git repositories trigger build processes using the Jenkins continuous integration environment. These triggers build and/or deploy software to specified locations, run tests, and/or configure service components. In most cases, Ansible is used as part of the process driven by Jenkins. Section Continuous Integration of the DIMS Developer Guide v 1.0.0 provides an overview of how this works and how to use it in development and testing DIMS components.
• System software installation and configuration of DIMS components are managed using Ansible playbooks that are in turn maintained in Git repositories. Only a bare minimum of manual steps are required to bootstrap a DIMS deployment. After that, configuration changes are made to Git repositories and those changes trigger continuous integration processes to get these changes into the running system. Section Deployment and Configuration of the DIMS Developer Guide v 1.0.0 covers how to use this framework for adding or managing the open source components that are used in a DIMS deployment.

1.1. Overview

This document is focused on the system administrative tasks that are involved in adding open source software components to the DIMS framework, how to convert installation instructions into Ansible playbooks or Dockerfile instructions that can be used to instantiate a service or microservice, how a complete DIMS instance (i.e., a complementary set of service and microservice components that function together as a coherent system) is installed, configured, debugged and/or tuned, and kept in running order over time.