The document presents a discussion on managing a Drupal platform for multiple sites, highlighting the challenges and solutions for single and multiple site configurations. It explores the advantages and drawbacks of single Drupal sites versus multisite installations, emphasizing the need for minimal downtime and shared features. Various custom solutions and services, including Aegir, Drupal Gardens, and Acquia Cloud Site Factory, are mentioned as potential tools to effectively manage such environments.

1. Hernâni Borges de Freitas
@hernanibf / hernani.pt
One Drupal to
Rule them all !
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2. About me
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.PT
Technical Team Lead PS
Drupal* many things
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. This presentation
 The challenge to manage a platform in
Drupal for sites with common business
features.
o Common software / common infrastructure.
o Launch new sites and introduce new features
with minimal downtime allowed per site.
o Share content/user data among sites.
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5. First challenge
“In our university we have old sites for
our main departments and projects. We
want to start from scratch and rebuild a
single experience in Drupal. ”
• Similar look and feel.
• Similar backend / architecture / editorial
experience.
• Possible to reuse content / features
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6. First question
What are several sites and what is a single
site?
One site == One Drupal site?
Many sites == Many Drupal sites?
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7. Options
Single Drupal site
• Same code.
• Same database.
• Contributed modules
will recognize
contexts and create
sections inside the
site.
• Same infrastructure.
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Many Drupal sites
• Same code (possibly
with some
differences).
• Different databases.
• Same infrastructure /
Different
infrastructure.

8. What’s the best?
It depends of:
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Sites differences.
Shared
properties/info.
Predicted evolution.
Teams responsible
for
build/maintain/admin
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9. Single Drupal site
Sections
Public Website
Maths Department
Sports Deparment
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10. Single Drupal site
Solution based:
 A single Drupal installation.
 Divided in sections managed by different people.
 Sections can be created using different modules:
 OG
 Context
…
Mostly used for:
 Webs/Intranets with different sections /
departments.
 Sections with different publishing workflow.
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11. Single Drupal site
Better fit for:
 Content shared amongst several sites.
 Similar user base / admin workflow.
 Small differences between sites in terms of
functionality.
 Similar look and feel.
Mostly used for:
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 Webs/Intranets with different sections /
departments.
 Sites with sections with different publishing
workflow.

12. Single Drupal site
Example: Organic groups (OG)
 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, workbench_og).
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13. Many Drupal sites
Public
Website
Maths
Website
Same codebase
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Sports
Website

14. Many Drupal sites
• Multisite installation
• Deployed separately
Solution based:
 Same code base.
 Different site installations (database).
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15. Many Drupal Sites - Multisite
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.
Drawbacks
• 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. Assuming you select the multiple site
route
“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 server
nodes where different sites are hosted.
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20. Solutions working in this space
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Custom solutions
Aegir – Started in 2007
Drupal Gardens – Launched in 2011
Acquia Cloud Site Factory – Launched in
2013
• Pantheon One – Launched in 2013
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21. Custom solutions – All the work from
scratch
• Software (Drupal)
– Custom Drupal distribution with your modules/themes
– Installation profile to configure your new sites.
• Infrastructure
– CM tool to provision new servers in your platform
easily. Similar configuration between servers.
– Several environments ready (Dev->Staging->Prod)
• Management service
– Provision new sites and maintain existing ones.
– Deployment tools to deploy code from a central
location.
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22. 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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23. Custom solutions
• Everything should be created automatically:
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– Sites components - Databases, disk directories and
virtual hosts:
– Server configuration - Config management (CM)
tools to provision and configure services
(puppet/chef..)
– Site installation - Drush site-install can install new
(multi)sites.
– Code Deployment - Capistrano / Drush deploy /
Custom scripts
– Management server – Controlling all the sites
(Custom)

24. 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
changes.
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25. Aegir
Good
• Simple networks / small sites.
• It can be self hosted.
Drawbacks
• Using a Drupal site to manage infrastructure is
tricky.
• Install and configure Aegir is not straightforward.
• Deploy code to several servers is challenging.
• Migrating sites involves copy all the database, files
and code and swap the vhost (Hard to scale for
larger sites).
• Hard to support the concept of several
environments.
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26. 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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27. 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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29. Acquia Cloud Site Factory
• Several distributions are available
(gardens, commons, commerce). New ones
can be created.
• Control Panel (Site Factory) 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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30. Acquia Cloud 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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31. Acquia Site Factory
• Freedom to customize it to your needs
with your code.
• All features associated with Acquia Cloud
– Scalable with suupport included.
• Powering the largest networks of Drupal
websites in the world.
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32. Demo
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33. We are hiring!
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Consultants
Support
Sales
Engineering

34. Questions?
@hernanibf / hernani.pt
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