Scalarium
Scalarium automates your communication and configuration of EC2 clusters.
You define a target state for your cluster, e.g. you need one load balancer, three Rails application servers, and a database server.
Once you tell Scalarium to start your cluster, Scalarium contacts the Amazon Compute Cloud (EC2) with your Amazon Web Services credentials on your behalf to start all desired instances.
The instances use a basic Ubuntu Linux image to bootstrap and install the Scalarium Agent.
Scalarium Agent
The Scalarium agent runs on every server and maintains a constant and encrypted connection to Scalarium. If the agent connects for the first time, Scalarium returns a unique configuration depending on the chosen role for this instance.
Thus, web servers get a configuration that includes installing Nginx while database servers get a configuration telling them to install MySQL.
After the agent successfully installed and configured the system, the instance is marked as "online" and can be used by the cluster.
Building blocks
Scalarium utilizes the agent to achieve four main advantages:
Use Scalarium to reduce spending time on cluster setup, configuration and management. Concentrate on building your application instead!
