System Configuration Management

The overwhelming majority of a software system’s lifespan is spent in use, not in design or implementation. So, why does conventional wisdom insist that software engineers focus primarily on the design and development of large-scale computing systems? In this collection of essays and articles, key members of Google’s Site Reliability Team explain how and why their commitment to the entire lifecycle has enabled the company to successfully build, deploy, monitor, and maintain some of the largest software systems in the world. You’ll learn the principles and practices that enable Google engineers to make systems more scalable, reliable, and efficient—lessons directly applicable to your organization. This book is divided into four sections: Introduction—Learn what site reliability engineering is and why it differs from conventional IT industry practices Principles—Examine the patterns, behaviors, and areas of concern that influence the work of a site reliability engineer (SRE) Practices—Understand the theory and practice of an SRE’s day-to-day work: building and operating large distributed computing systems Management—Explore Google's best practices for training, communication, and meetings that your organization can use

Stereotypes portray software engineers as a reckless lot, and stereotypes paint software configuration management (SCM) devotees as inflexible. Based on these impressions, it is no wonder that projects can be riddled with tension! The truth probably lies somewhere in between these stereotypes, and this book shows how proven SCM practices can foster a healthy team-oriented culture that produces better software. The authors show that workflow, when properly managed, can avert delays, morale problems, and cost overruns. A patterns approach (proven solutions to recurring problems) is outlined so that SCM can be easily applied and successfully leveraged in small to medium sized organizations. The patterns are presented with an emphasis on practicality. The results speak for themselves: improved processes and a motivated workforce that synergize to produce better quality software.

An effective systems development and design process is far easier to explain than it is to implement. A framework is needed that organizes the life cycle activities that form the process. This framework is Configuration Management (CM). Software Configuration Management discusses the framework from a standards viewpoint, using the original

This workshop series is now over ten years old, which is a pretty long time for a very focussed topic: Configuration Management. The first conference took place in 1988 (Grassau, Germany) and the topics were focussed on version control and rebuilding. Many people consider that SCM is one of the few areas of software engineering that can be considered to be really successful. Products, that more or less fulfill their p- pose, exist, and everybody agrees that they are now mandatory for a successful so- ware project. Indeed, during the second half of the nineties, SCM has entered a maturation phase, in which good commercial products have been incorporating many of the features - signed and discussed at previous conferences of this workshop. With the generali- tion of commercial products, the question now is: What are the objectives of a sci- tific workshop on this topic? Is there any more research to be done in SCM today? This ninth volume in the series reflects pretty well the current state and mood in the CM community. There are an unprecedented number of papers discussing the current state of the art and trying to identify research directions (session 6). On some core topics, like versioning (session 3), and following SCM8 tracks, papers present work on unified models. Versioning models, after years of raging discussions, now seem to have found a consensus.

Software configuration management (SCM) is one of the scientific tools that is aimed to bring control to the software development process. This new resource is a complete guide to implementing, operating, and maintaining a successful SCM system for software development. Project managers, system designers, and software developers are presented with not only the basics of SCM, but also the different phases in the software development lifecycle and how SCM plays a role in each phase. The factors that should be considered and the pitfalls that should be avoided while designing the SCM system and SCM plan are also discussed. In addition, this third edition is updated to include cloud computing and on-demand systems. This book does not rely on one specific tool or standard for explaining the SCM concepts and techniques; In fact, it gives readers enough information about SCM, the mechanics of SCM, and SCM implementation, so that they can successfully implement a SCM system.

This third book in the new Trends in Software series presents the state of the art in SCM. It features coverage of industrial SCM tools, specific integrated SCM systems such as DSEE, ODIN, SHAPE, ADELE, and PCTE, and novel SCM algorithms and techniques such as remote installation tools, delta storage, and transaction mechanisms.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on System Configuration Management, SCM-8, held in conjunction with ECOOP'98 in Brussels, Belgium, in July 1998. The volume presents 17 revised full papers carefully reviewed and selected for presentation; also included is a tutorial lecture; approximately half of the papers come from industry. The book is divided into sections on industrial experience, experimental systems, product data management and system configuration management, formal approaches, cooperative systems, and Web-based applications.