[BlueOnyx:19727] 5209R YUM Updates (important!)

[Michael Stauber]

Hi all,

During the last two weeks Greg and I have taken a long and hard look at
BlueOnyx 5209R to apply various improvements small and large to provide
a much better user experience. We put the focus on ease of installation,
ease of use, speed and reliability.

To that end we made many changes and code adjustments. It starts with
the BlueOnyx ISO installer, which is now more visual about what it does
and more professionally looking than before. We also modified certain
RPMs to install faster (Dovecot!) off the CD and reduced redundant
operations during install and setup.

A somewhat more massive change that should greatly benefit stability and
speed were the changes that we made to CCEd to adjust it more towards
Systemd:

We split the Unit-File (startup script) in two parts:

cced.init.service
==================

This Unit-File now simply starts, stops or restarts CCEd. It does so in
a fashion that Systemd itself will restart CCEd in case it should fail.
But as stable as CCEd is these days? That's not really a concern.

cced.construct.service
=======================

This service just runs the CCEd constructors that perform
configurational tasks during startup. You can now run it stand alone or
individually.

If you want to restart both in one go, the script
/usr/sausalito/sbin/cced.init can be used to issue start, stop, hash,
restart, rehash or reload transactions of CCEd and/or the constructors.
This script is what the GUI will use if it deems it necessary to
reinitialize CCEd.

swatch.service
===============

Swatch is the Active Monitor component that is run via a cronjob to
determine if enabled services are up and runing. If not, it will try to
restart them. It will also warn or inform if that failed. To make sure
all enabled services are up and running after a reboot, we run
"swatch.service" as last service during startup.

CCEd Constructors / Handlers
=============================

During reboot or during GUI initiated config changes, CCEd will run
Constructors or Handlers. These are small Perl scripts which carry out
the configurational tasks on the system. We went through our existing
Constructors and Handlers and did a little spring cleaning. Several
Constructors were no longer needed and got removed. Others did their
tasks in slightly ineffective fashions. We made them more effective at
their jobs.

The net result of this is that CCEd startups (with a full Constructor
run) are now somewhere between 5-10x faster than before. The speed
increase depends a bit on the scenario in which a Constructor run happens.

To give some examples: A freshly installed 5209R. Everything (network
and such) is already configured. Previously a constructor run would need
about 18-22 seconds. Now it finishes in 2.5-3.0 seconds on my test box.

But let's not speak about test cases alone, but take a real example: A
production 5209R with 20 Vsites and 80-90 Users and a couple of extra
PKGs from the BlueOnyx Shop installed. Previously a constructor run
would take 55-58 seconds on that server. Now it finishes in 9-10 seconds.

The speed increase also affects some GUI usage cases, so GUI
transactions themselves are also a bit more speedy in certain usage
scenarios.

Release of the Updates
=======================

As we laid hand on many parts of BlueOnyx during these code and
performance improvements we've accumulated quite a number of updates.
Once we release these updates and you're already fairly up to date on
other YUM updates? Then you will get around 160-170 updates in one go.

These updates are currently in the BlueOnyx 5209R testing YUM repository
and will be released on :

------------------------------------------------------
*  Sunday, 19th June 2016 at 23:00 US Eastern time.  *
------------------------------------------------------

An updated 5209R ISO image with all these updates has already been
rolled up and is currently available for download:

http://www.blueonyx.it/index.php?page=downloads

At this time we're conducting tests to make sure that the YUM update of
existing 5209R servers will be as smooth as we want it to be.

-- 
With best regards

Michael Stauber