SwitchTower: Automating Application Deployment.
As
the 37signals applications have scaled up to run on multiple servers,
we needed a better way to manage the deployment phase. We wanted to
automate that all six servers got the newest version, that the database
server ran the migrations, that the FastCGI processes were restarted on
the application servers, and possibly that the web servers showed a
“down for maintenance screen”.
SwitchTower is the
extraction of that need and its going to be a new part of Rails in the
next release. It’s the work of Jamis Buck and you can preview it right
now by playing with the beta gems/subversion trunk.
You won’t even be going in blind-folded. Jamis has already created an incredibly extensive manual
that teaches you all about how to use SwitchTower. Get on the
band-wagon and reduce your deployment pains to “rake deploy”. [Riding Rails]