created on Fri, 2008-10-10 12:59

It's a baby beta named Ægir - say "eager"

Today, Drupal rockstar and the  Raincity Studios super-developer and South African Emissary, Adrian announced the release of Ægir 0.1 Beta1. Named for the Norse God of the Seas, this evolution of Hostmaster is a critical part of Bryght's hosting environment.

The hardwork of Raincity Studios and Koumbit software engineers, and other contributors, is helping take mass Drupal hosting to the next level and you can join the fun - start at the Ægir hosting system group.

Added this release:

• Drupal install profiles - can be localized to provision sites in various languages
• Improvements to the comprehensive inline documentation
• Installation wizard to modify and/or simplify the user interface

User-interface refinements, non-critical ancillary features, and a Drupal 6 version are on the immediate roadmap.

Ægir is made for mass hosting

Brielfy, here's what Ægir is and how it works:

Ægir is a new set of contributed modules for Drupal that aims to solve the problem of managing a large number of Drupal sites. It does this by providing you with a simple Drupal based hosting front end for your entire network of sites. To deploy a new site you simply have to create a new Site node. To backup or upgrade sites, you simply manage your site nodes as you would any other node.

To non-techies, this release allows organizations needing batches of similar sites  to be up-and-running, quickly and easily, for a minimal investment. The sites can be centrally-managed for patches, security updates, and new modules or themes.

The open source nature allows companies and organizations to use, extend, and then contribute back, to make the software even more "real-world" capable.

Personally, I can see this being a powerful tool for school districts, muncipalities, sports leagues, record labels, and inter/national organizations. One site to rule them all!

Required geekery

Here's what you need to play with Ægir at home:

• A Unix-based operating system - no Ægir for Windows
• Full access to your server or machine
• A web accessible Drupal directory with a hostname

Then, proceed to the overview wiki entry to assemble the components or, if you are savvy, download the complete Ægir package.

Contribute

Chime in at the Drupal hosting project to share your experiences, report bugs, fix patches, write documentation, etc. 

Bonus

It's an "Aesc": To type the character "Æ" on a Mac, use option+shift+apostrophe - cool eh.

More about Ægir: Adrian Speaks About Ægir at Drupal Con Szeged and Szeged presentation slides (.pdf)

Image: "Ægir, Rán and their nine daughters prepare a huge vat of ale" from a 19th century Swedish translation of the Poetic Edda - via Wikipedia.