Enhancing SysOps with DevOps
Since discovering it a few months ago, Manjaro Linux has been such a delight with it’s ease of use and performance. So good that, against conventional wisdom, I really want to try purposing this distribution as a server operating system.
Arch Linux uses a rolling release model which means that it is continually updated. For decades, we have deployed servers that required hours of configuration and maintenance to keep going. Only the most seasoned system administrators would be entrusted to look after mission critical business resources.
In software and web development, we typically follow a rolling release model in order best service a project that’s in active use. This is actually why Arch Linux uses this model in the first place. Due to conventions in system administration, we generally think of servers a bit like a real world construction project — things have to be managed carefully, in stages and follow a strict building code. But is that the best approach?
Through automated testing tools and managing an additional release pipeline for server configuration, any software or web development project could manage a parallel release process for updating the server and the deployed code. This means less time to maintain a server. In fact, the idea of carefully building and caring for a server doesn’t make much sense in the cloud landscape. In 2020, most VPS servers are backed up daily by the hosting platform and most critical services are hosted on highly available and scalable cloud services. Resources such as databases and file storage are outsourced to Amazon, Microsoft and others. We have even seen the advent of serverless applications that are built on a scaffold of cloud services.
My concept for using Manjaro Linux as a server will have automatic updates disabled and cannot be setup and maintained following the conventional model — it has to be thought of as a deployment with version controlled configuration. Imagine you’re working on a Wordpress site and a new update for Manjaro and a few other applications is available, you could install the update, test it with the latest version of your software in the development environment and then deploy both at the same time knowing they would simply work — no nasty surprises as the development and production servers are using the same software and your testing has confirmed everything is working.
In a large corporation or studio environment, a production Manjaro server could fit well into an existing rolling release cycle — so long as testing measures are put in place to check viability of an update, there’s no reason why servers couldn’t be updated at the same time, and therefore rate, that the applications on them are. This might bring administration costs down and thanks to the constant stream of bugfixes, which can be security related, might even improve end user outcomes rather than undermine them.
I’ll be building my first VM image using Manjaro Architect, probably with this guide. Windows Server continues to be used and frankly the continued popularity of cPanel says to me that perhaps something could be done by making remote Linux Desktop in the server a thing. Linux Oses certainly already have all the necessarily plumbing, it’s just a matter of creating the proof of concept, refining that and convincing others that it’s a great idea (if it turns out to be). Wish me luck!
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