Roel De Meester gave a talk on Aegir at Drupalcon Paris. These are my notes.

The Aegir session covered a basic overview of what and how the system can be used to rapidly deploy instants of Drupal. It culminated with three short case studies of how it is currently being used.

What is Aegir? Aegir is simply a bunch of linux scripts plus a Drupal site. You can think of it as one site to lead them all. The current beta (0.3) is a stable release and can be deployed.

Using Aegir, you can define a new platform - a platform is basically an install profile. You can use Aegir to manage backups, restorations, and site migrations.

This system was used as "Hostmaster" at Raincity for 4 years. More recently, Aegir has been developed and used at Development Seed. It is open, flexible, and easy to use. To use it you need:

• A Drupal capable server - some flavour of *nix is preferred
• You need root access to the server
• At least two hours of time for the initial setup

You can find instructions on how to setup Aegir here: http://tinyurl.com/aegir-install

A quick demo was done showing how to set up an instance and going through a site upgrade. It was amazingly simple to make use of the tool to engage in an upgrade and seemed extraordinarily user friendly.

So, how can you use Aegir? Where would it be helpful?

• a hosting firm could use it to monitor and deploy
• one could use it to streamline the development process
• intranets
• configuration of sites though features
• you can use it to see patterns of usage

The comment was made that it makes sense to "lose that client" by enabling them to manage Aegir by themselves. There are several reasons for this:

• Change will keep your developers happy
• New challenges encourage learning

It becomes rather simple to create a profile to build 5 or more similar sites and a client can be taught to use aegir or they could hire a Drupal developer

The three examples shown in the presentation included:

• Campaign sites for grocers
• Webshops/shopping carts
• A flash gaming platform