Anthony Guntharp
Thu, 12/27/2007 - 17:48 — fusion94
What is your motivation for being a member of the Drupal Association?:
For this role it would be to further improve the Drupal Infrastructure so as to minimize downtime for 2008 while maximizing performance .
What are the primary goals you would like to work on?:
For the next year I'd like to see drupal.org and it's related sites to meet and exceed uptime goals for 2008. I'd also like to ensure that the systems architecture that is laid out will allow for growth of the systems so that in future years there is a clear, concise plan for HW and SW upgrades.
What strategy will you employ in order to accomplish said goals?:
I will periodically poll the community for comments as to what they would like to see done while at the same time working closely with the infrastructure team from the past to determine what has been done before and what they feel needs to be done moving forward.
I will use my personal contacts to determine if they are any value to the Drupal Infrastructure team in terms of sw consulting, mysql tuning, and hw donations.
What yearly budget would you need in order to accomplish said goals?:
This I'm unsure about as I'm not familiar with the current HW layout and the current Drupal metrics.
What strengths/experience you have to help you accomplish the goals?:
Currently I'm Director of Engineering Operations for a Enterprise Content Management system in the bay area. Prior to that I've been working as a consultant/systems architect for a number of years. 8 years ago I was one of the four co-founders of SourceForge.
Here a a few of the sites I've been involved with from an engineering director/systems architecture perspective.
http://sf.net
https://helixcommunity.org/
http://www.trixbox.com/
http://www.trixbox.org
http://freshlymixed.com
http://www.mybloglog.com/
http://dogster.com
http://catster.com
How long have you been using Drupal, and how'd you get your start?:
Approximately 2 years now, I got involved with Drupal due to the needs of a consulting client.
How much time can you invest in your Drupal Association work?:
16-20 hours/month
Apply for Board of Directors membership:
Apply for Board of Directors membership
Board of Directors position:
Infrastructure manager
Statutes:
I have read and understood the Statutes of the Drupal Association. I am prepared to participate by following those statutes.
Comments
Drupal Infrastructure Experience
Anthony,
I'm very impressed with you application above, and your experience for the role of infrastructure manager seems extensive. Forgive me if this is common knowledge (outside this thread), but can you describe what large Drupal systems you have managed? Is the current project that you mention about "Enterprise Content Management system" Drupal?
I notice that you use Wordpress for your personal blog (I got their from your Linked in profile). Is there a reason that you have chosen not to use Drupal for this?
-Henry
Specifics
Hi Anthony,
Considering if you get elected you will be mainly working with me, I have some questions for you based on your application :).
"For this role it would be to further improve the Drupal Infrastructure so as to minimize downtime for 2008 while maximizing performance ."
There are very few system administrators anywhere who would not list this as a goal, so I guess I do approve. However, it would be nice to hear more of your plans for accomplishing this. At this point, Drupal's infrastructure is quite a bit more complex than your average open source project and while there are very many areas I can see room for improvement I'd be very interested in your ideas, especially considering your experience in the field.
"For the next year I'd like to see drupal.org and it's related sites to meet and exceed uptime goals for 2008."
See my above comment.
"I'd also like to ensure that the systems architecture that is laid out will allow for growth of the systems so that in future years there is a clear, concise plan for HW and SW upgrades."
This is mostly done or being done at the moment. We have fully transitioned from a system of two webnodes to a system that allows for the quick deployment of N number of webnodes behind LVS ip layer load balancers. What is difficult to deal with at this point is the DB layer, but this is getting better with the slave patches that drupal.org runs and the promise of drupal moving to heavier use of auto_increment columns. Again specifics would be lovely. I realize you don't know drupal's infrastructure as well as Gerhard or myself, but you could give some examples of sites you have scaled up to this level before?
Interested in more specifics...
After you've reviewed Kieran's documentation, I'd be very interested in seeing an update of your application with more specifics on a infrastructure plan for 2008. You're running for that position against an incumbent (Gerhard).
Dries's Drupal Association wishlist post (http://buytaert.net/drupal-association-organization-chart-2008-wishlist) cites a couple of specific types of infrastructure managers: server infrastructure coordinator, and web infrastructure coordinator. Would either of those fit your experience/interest?
Diagrams on scaling the infrastructure
Hi, please review this post on the most recent hardware upgrades for Drupal.org
http://drupal.org/node/191293
You'll find architecture diagrams, presentations on scaling Drupal.org. You should join the infrastructure team, and help with some issues. Please get in touch with me and I'll let you know how you can help.
Kieran Lal