Imagine you have a scenario where an enterprise wants to be able to spin up multiple websites, micro sites to be precise, which are independent of each other, allow for pushing and pulling content from a single source of truth or from each other, are easily manageable and independently configurable. You would be surprised to know how common a scenario that is for many enterprises. I had to research various options and propose an architecture for precisely such a scenario.

1. 1
THE USE CASE
Imagine you have a scenario where
an enterprise wants to be able to
spin up multiple websites, micro
sites to be precise, which are
independent of each other, allow for
pushing and pulling content from a
single source of truth or from each
other, are easily manageable and
independently configurable.

2. 2
Drupal Solutions Comparison For Multiple Sites With
Related Content
Acquia Site Factory
v/s
Aegir Project
v/s
Custom Stack

3. 3
OUR OPTIONS IN
PICKING UP
A SOLUTION STACK
Acquia Site Factory
Aegir Project
Custom Stack

4. 4
ACQUIA
SITE FACTORY
Advantage:
 Managed Hosting
All the drupal sites under site factory are hosted on Acquia
cloud platform for Drupal.
 Site Dashboard
Sites can be created and managed using a GUI dashboard.
Users, groups and permissions of who controls what site
and also be managed.
 Templates
Common configurations and themes can be saved in
templates that can be used to create new sites.
 Site Cloning
A ‘clean copy’ of the existing site can be made such that
only the setup is copied and not the content. Or a ‘complete
clone’ of the site can be created.

5. 5
ACQUIA
SITE FACTORY
Advantage:
 Staging Deployment
A staging version of the site can be created from the live
site. New features can be tested against the staging site and
then pushed to the live site.
 Open SaaS
There is no vendor lock-in on the site code and database,
we can download them both and use else where other than
the site factory if we desire so.
 Single Sign On
Single sign on can be turned on for site factory sites such
that you can use same account to login to each of them.

6. 6
ACQUIA
SITE FACTORY
Disadvantage:
 Up-front Costs
This option would cost us more upfront than the other
options. Total cost of ownership can be worked out as
requirements for the project are gathered.
 No Flexibility
Site factory is a proprietary product, where infrastructural
changes cannot be made.
 Domain Name Quirks
It might not be possible to name the site abc.com/site1,
abc.com/site2. Top level domain naming system of
site1.abc.com, site2.abc.com would work.
 Custom Work
Allowing selective content tweaking, pushing and pulling
content from a single source of truth, and tracking changes
would still need custom work.

7. 7
AEGIR PROJECT
Advantages:
 Lower Costs
Aegir is open source and free to use IaaS software.
 Flexibility
Hosting = AWS, Linode, Rackspace, Others
Server = Apache, Nginx
Operating System = Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS (Linux/Unix)
 Open Source
An active developer community supporting many extension
tools, workflows and documentation.
 Site Dashboard
GUI based dashboard to manage servers and drupal sites.
 Site Cloning
New sites can be created as clones of existing sites.

8. 8
AEGIR PROJECT
Disadvantages:
 Self Managed Hosting
Aegir make it easy, but a SysAdmin would still be needed on
the team.
 Difficult Single Sign-On
Implementing single sign on across the family of sites
managed by aegir needs to be custom implemented.
 Poor Deployments Support
Stage to Live deployment is only supported for the first
deploy, thereafter deployment tools need to be setup.
 Less Polished GUI Tools
 Drupal 6
Aegir is itself build on Drupal, but the current version is D6
and not D7.

9. 9
CUSTOM STACK
Advantages:
 Complete Flexibility
All requirements and desired workflows can be addressed.
 Lower Upfront Costs
Infrastructure can be provisioned with lower budgets.
 Open Source Tools
Best tools for the job can be integrated together –
Drush
Migrate
Diff
Rules and more.
 No Domain Name Quirks
Complete control of how the sites should be named and
where should they be located.

10. 10
CUSTOM STACK
Disadvantages:
 Complexity And Risk
Building or integrating required tools from scratch increase
the complexity and risk associated with the platform.
 GUI Challenge
Significant investment would be required to build GUI tools
and dashboards. Powerful command line utilities would be
available though.
 Self Managed
SysAdmins and Support and Maintenance developers would
need to be on the team to manage the platform built.
 Long Term Costs
Dealing with technical debt and support could increase the
long term costs of the platform.

11. 11
Single View Summary

12. 12
SINGLE VIEW
SUMMARY
Site Factory Aegir Project Custom Stack
Managed Hosting Fully Managed Partially Managed Partially Managed
Flexibility Low Moderate Very High
Upfront Costs Very High Low Low
Long-term Costs Moderate High High
Complexity, Risk Low Moderate High
GUI Tools Great Okay Poor
Site Cloning Out-of-the-box Partially Available Custom Work
Delegate Access Out-of-the-box Partially Available Custom Work
Open Source No Yes Partially Yes
Domain Naming Quirky Complete Control Complete Control
Single Sign On Out-of-the-box Partially Available Custom Work
Site Staging Out-of-the-box Partially Available Custom Work

13. 13
Links And References
• aegir drupal 7 roadmap - https://www.drupal.org/node/1261030
• acquia cloud ste factory connector - https://www.drupal.org/project/acsf
• site factory release notes - https://docs.acquia.com/site-factory/release-notes
• site factory youtube videos - https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=acquia+site+factory
• migrate d2d - https://www.drupal.org/project/migrate_d2d
• migrate - https://www.drupal.org/project/migrate
• restws - https://www.drupal.org/project/restws
• aegir on DO - https://www.drupal.org/project/hosting
• provision drush scripts on DO - https://www.drupal.org/project/Provision
• aegir vs drupal - http://community.aegirproject.org/sites/community.aegirproject.org/files/aegir-ecology-
vs-drupal-gardens_1.pdf
• why use aegir with aws - http://www.slideshare.net/sethviebrock/drupal-campma-aegi
• introduction to aegir - http://www.slideshare.net/howardjacobson/aegir-introduction