This document discusses options for managing multiple Drupal sites from a single platform. It presents the options of using a single Drupal site with modules like Organic Groups or multiple Drupal sites. It also introduces the concept of a "factory of sites" that allows new sites to be quickly created and deployed in a standardized way. Specific solutions like Drupal Gardens, Acquia Site Factory, Aegir, and custom solutions are outlined and their advantages and disadvantages discussed.

1. One Drupal to
Rule them all !
Hernâni Borges de Freitas
@hernanibf / hernani.pt

2. About me!
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.PT
Technical
Team
Lead
PS
Drupal*
many
things
Travel
lover
Twitter.com/hernanibf
Hernani.pt

3. One Drupal to rule them all!
http://buytaert.net/one-drupal-to-rule-them-all
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4. One Drupal to rule them all!
“My organization wants to standardize in
Drupal and use it to replace all the sites in
our network”:
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They can be managed by different people
but we saw them as a unique platform.
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They have different look and feel.
They can share some common sections or
content.

5. This presentation!
• Manage a network of Drupal sites with same
features / properties.
• Launch new sites and introduce new features.
• Minimal downtime allowed per site.
• Share data among sites (content/user login)
• Grow their infrastructure in number of nodes /
number of clusters.
• Common software / common infrastructure.
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6. First challenge!
What are several sites and what is one site?
• A site for maths department, another for physics,
another for literature, another for computer
science. All with same look and feel.
• Sites need to show news from all of those sites.
• Admins should just edit those sites from one
place.
• One site => One Drupal site?
• Many sites => Many Drupal sites?
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7. Options!
All sites in one Drupal
site
• Same code.
• Same database.
• Contributed modules
will recognize contexts
and create sections
inside the site.
• Same infrastructure.
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All sites in different
Drupal sites
• Same code (with some
differences).
• Different databases.
• Same infrastructure /
Different infrastructure.

8. What’s the best?!
Traditional consultant answer:
It depends!
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- Sites’ differences.
- Shared properties/
info.
- Predicted evolution.
- Teams responsible
for build/maintain/
admin.

9. One Drupal site!
Better fit for:
§ Content present in several sites.
§ Similar look and feel.
§ Similar user base / admin workflow.
§ Small differences between sites in terms of
functionality,
Mostly used for:
§ Webs/Intranets with different sections /
departments.
§ Sections with different publishing workflow.
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10. One Drupal site!
Organic groups
§ Groups define sections/sites.
§ Content and users are associated with groups.
§ Users have different roles and permissions
within the group.
§ Very good integration with views, panels, rules
§ Good suite of complementary modules
(og_theme, og_menu, og_workbench,
og_workflow).
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11. One Drupal site!
Other options
• Domain access module
• Access control modules
• Others…
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12. One Drupal site!
Advantages
• Easier to create a unique experience of one
single site/platform.
• Easier to share content.
• Easier to share users / roles / permissions.
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13. One Drupal site!
Drawbacks
• Everything gets a bit more complicated.
• Codebase and structures are usually larger
(more views/blocks/content types/panels
for the different sections).
• Single point of failure.
• Harder to decouple in the future.
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14. Many Drupal sites!
• Multisites
• Different codebases
In either case they always have
• A common base
– Common Drupal distribution (Features + Install
Profile).
– Common infrastructure.
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15. Many Drupal Sites - Multisites!
Advantages
• One codebase to maintain / update.
• Easier to reuse infrastructure.
• Lower memory utilization (APC).
• Simpler at all levels.
Drawbacks!
• Single point of failure.
• Common maintenance windows.
• Harder to maintain differences in code (multiple
versions for same module).
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16. Many Drupal sites - different
codebases!
Advantages!
• Can be deployed in different locations.
• No single point of failure in infrastructure.
• Easier to support differences.
Bad!
• Harder to manage pushes of code to all sites.
• Need for a consistent process to manage updates
of code.
• As there can be more differences, harder to test.
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17. Standards!
“Marketing is demanding us to be able to spin up
new sites that are limited in functionality but require
minimal development time”.
“Operations is asking us for a standard
deployment/maintenance process for all of our
sites.
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18. Meet the idea of factory of sites!
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19. Meet the idea of factory of sites!
• Single codebase/distribution with enough
modules/features allowing customize sites
without touching code.
• Limited functionality (less is good).
• Easy to spin a new site in few minutes.
• Easy to update sites in the factory without
impacting full network.
• Easy to grow infrastructure by adding cluster
of nodes where different sites are hosted.
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20. Solutions working in this space!
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Drupal Gardens
Acquia Cloud Site Factory
Pantheon One
Aegir
Custom solutions

21. Drupalgardens.com!
• Software as a Service (SaaS). Freely available !
• One distribution (gardens) provides a rich editing
experience (D7).
– Rich field types (Link, Date, Field Collection), Wysiwyg,
Media, Theme editor, WebForms
– Create content through the Drupal Gardens iPhone
app.
• Multisite installation.
• Hosted in Amazon Web Services (AWS), easy to
grow and allocate more machines to the cluster.
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22. Drupalgardens.com!
• SSO using OpenId. Accounts controlled in
the gardener site.
• Not possible to add any code.
• No vendor lock-in. Possible to export code/
db/files.
• Pricing depending on features enabled and
bandwith consumed.
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24. Acquia Cloud Site Factory!
• Several distributions are available (gardens,
commons, commerce). New ones can be
created.
• Control Panel (Gardener) controls all sites in
the network.
• Code is controlled from a GIT repository.
• Two environments are created (production/
sandboxes).
• Sites are created directly in production. Sites
can be cloned in sandbox for testing.
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25. Acquia Site Factory!
• SaaS
– Support and SLA on the software. Several
distributions available
• SaaS+
– Support and SLA on the software. Client can add
code audited by us.
• PaaS
– Support on the platform. Client can add any code
to the platform.
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26. Acquia Site Factory!
• Powering the largest network of Drupal
websites in the world.
• Scalable.
• Support included.
• Best of Gardens + Acquia Cloud.
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27. Demo
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28. Aegir!
• Community project to control Drupal
hosting.
• Open source, Self Hosted.
• Hostmaster controls the websites in the
network.
• Aegir is responsible for controlling code
deployment, database creation, vhost
change.
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29. Aegir!
• Platforms have a code base and will host
several sites.
• Platforms are associated with a a docroot
(can be defined using drush make files).
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30. Aegir platforms!
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31. Aegir - Sites!
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32. Aegir - Migrations!
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33. Aegir !
Good!
• Simple networks / simple sites.
• It can be self hosted.
Drawbacks!
• Using a Drupal to manage infrastructure might be tricky.
• Install and configure Aegir is not straightforward.
• Deploy code to several servers is challenging.
• Update sites involves migrating them from platform to
platform.
• Migrating sites involves copy all the database, files and
code and swap the vhost (Hard to scale for larger sites).
• Harder to support the concept of several environments.
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34. Custom solutions!
Users/Visitors
Platform Admin
Management
Server
Load Balancer
Deploy
process
Apache/PHP
Memcache
Web1
Web2
Half size
Shared Storage
Staging
MySql
Active/Passive
Production
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35. Custom solutions!
• Management server
– Access to all hosts in the infrastructure via
SSH.
– Database of sites.
– Issuing commands in all sites
• Drush
• Drush site alias
– Move databases/files directories between
environments (drush sql-sync, drush rsync).
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36. Custom solutions!
• Everything should be created automatically:
– Databases, disk directories and virtual hosts:
– Config management (CM) tools / custom scripts.
– Drush site-install can install new (multi)sites.
• Deploy code to the servers
– Capistrano
– Drush deploy
– Custom scripts
• Graphic interface to view all the sites and their
properties (custom development) and manage
jobs (Jenkins?).
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37. Custom solutions!
• Infrastructure
– Easily launch new nodes to the infrastructure to
support production and pre-production
environments and configure them automatically
(CM Tools).
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38. We are hiring!
• Consultants
• Support
• Sales
• Engineering
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39. Questions?
@hernanibf
/
hernani.pt
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