Configuration Management Initiative and Features: Professional Change Management for Drupal

Drupal is notorious for holding many configurations in its database which makes change management daunting. This sessions focuses on strategies to store configurations in a file-based format in order to make changes low risk, rapidly deployable, and easy to manage.

Over the course of Drupal 6 and 7 Features has matured to the point to where it--along with the proper extensions--can manage most necessary configurations. D6 and D7 sites will remain in service for a while to come so we'll cover how to organize your Features to make them easy to maintain and deploy. We'll also dive into the guts of Features to gain an understanding of how it manages changes.

Drupal 8 introduces a new age in configuration management with its Content Management Initiative. We'll discuss the key differences between the CMI system and Features and how this impacts deploying changes. Drupal 8 will be ready for a professional change management process right out of the box, will you be ready?

Slides: 
features-based-deployment.pdf
Schedule info
Status: 
Proposed
Session Info
Speaker(s): 
kerasai
Track: 
DevOps
Experience level: 
Intermediate

Comments

Kristen Pol's picture Kristen Pol replied on

I definitely want to see this one. I've been using Features for a long time and am curious how D8 is going to change things.

cboyden's picture cboyden replied on

Looks good. I'd like to learn more about Features deployment on multiple sites in an environment where configurations can be overridden in different ways.

rgristroph's picture rgristroph replied on

I will definitely be attending as many of the CMI sessions as I can :)

robertDouglass's picture robertDouglass replied on

This is a no-brainer. The more we all know about this topic, the better. Schedule it and make it mandatory.

bsnodgrass's picture bsnodgrass replied on

Really hoping this session is accepted. I saw a precursor to it at our Fox Valley Drupal Meetup (far west Chicago suburbs) and I'm looking forward to seeing the next version. This approach seems to me to be the most practical way to handle the workflow to maintain and deploy D6 and D7 and contrasting it to what the D8 Configuration Management Initiative has in store for us will be very beneficial.

forestmars's picture forestmars replied on

+1 for this session in general. However, while Features is really good for some things, I'd be happy to debate the claim that

Over the course of Drupal 6 and 7 Features has matured to the point to where it--along with the proper extensions--can manage most necessary configurations.

I won't attempt to unpack that in this comment, though I do think it's questionable at best.

Of course the point of this session is where we're going, not where we've been, right…?