Deploying a VO

Joining the CPS-VO by founding a new group was covered previously in the chapter titled Form & Manage Groups. Here we discuss creating a new Virtual Organization from ground zero.

Setting Up a Development Environment

In the upcoming sections, we discuss options for instantiating a new Virtual Organization, which is based upon the CPS-VO project's open-source codebase. A detailed description of the process for replicating the CPS-VO on a local workstation or laptop to be used for software development is given here.

Multi-Site Installs

Drupal's multi-site features allow one to easily associate a new domain name to the existing CPS-VO infrastructure. Multi-site installations leverage all existing computing hardware, networking infrastructure and system administration staff resources. Additionally, since multi-sites share the same codebase, all future software development and code maintenance for the core CPS-VO modules are shared with sister sites with little additional overhead¹. Given that multi-sites share all resources all the way up to, but stopping short of, their Drupal configuration, the installation process for this mode of operation is far easier.

Deploying an Independent VO

Alternatively, one may instantiate a new virtual organization at a physically separate site, assuming the requisite computational infrastructure and administrative personell are available. In this case, however, a snapshot of the VO codebase is forked off, and there is no automated support for managing future software upgrades. The process for creating a new Virtual Organization is a subset of that of setting up a development environment outlined above, where the difference is that Drupal's configuration and site content will not be replicated from http://cps-vo.org.

1. It is still possible to develop new, customized features on a sister site that is isolated from the core CPS-VO activities.