| This essay provides a new method of software development and management indistributed file system to meet the enterprise requirements of software security, audit,quick deployment, acquire, instant rollback and un-installation. The target is toreduce the cost of software management on the client side. Generally, enterpriseneeds to perform trivial client works include file writing, registry writing and occupyclient storage to complete the deployment of software. It is especially hard tomanage this situation if the enterprise has global offices and each office site hasmore than2000client machines. Using the features of distributed file system, suchas: logical namespace, area mounting, auto replication, etc, we can leverage thesoftware life cycle. It is especially convenience to the small applications andplug-ins that developed by enterprise internally. These kinds of software are suitableto load from distributed file system. The method in this essay reduces the time ofdevelopment, test, deployment, rollback, subscribe and un-subscribe.The contents of this essay are to give a methodology that could be applied todeployment and maintance parts of software life cycle combine with distributed filesystem. Design the namespace of distributed file system to meet the requirements ofsoftware developing, testing, release, update and roll back. Provide a user interfaceto allow user to browser, one click deployment, subscribe and un-subscribe all theavailable applications in the firm. Also, the essay shows an Outlook plug-inprototype that can load the plug-ins from distributed file system according to user'ssubscription information. Using the logical namespace of distributed file system toimplement software versioning, instant installation and upgrade.The main contents of this essay is to design and implement an plug-in prototypethat can leverage the environment of distributed file system to custmize the loading of user written Outlook plug-ins which stored themsleves in DFS. The plug-inprototype can read the remote user profile in AFS to get the configuration file ofOutlook plug-ins, and then load them into client side. Also the plug-in prototype canbridge the communication of event message and object models between Outlookhost and user written plug-ins. To compliment this core idea, reduce the cost ofapplication deployment, the essay also provides some subordinate projects thatsupport the prototype plug-in, includes: solution of how to design the area of DFS;Script to aggregate the application configuration files; User subscriptionmanagement system. To deploy the small applications within DFS, we use shortcutto point to a virtual path in DFS. That way keeps client deployments simple andrestrict the complication into DFS. Use these solutions smartly could dramticallyreduce the deployment and management cost of application maintance.This methodology is applied to one enterprise already. Many small software, forexample: notepad++, winmerge and Office plug-ins are using this method in theirlife cycle management. This methodology might not approachable for the small ormiddle enterprise because it relies on distributed file system. The plug-in proto typealso has some compatibility issues to be considered during the plat-form transactionfrom Windows XP to Windows7. It also requires architecture refectory to face theplatform dependency challenges. |
