Welcome to Operation Advanced Infrastructure (OAI)

Motivation

This project is an ongoing effort to create a better infrastructure for our preliminary working environment and to document it accordingly. It will help to onboard new team members, e.g. admins or developers in order to remove some load from existing personnel.

Goal

This project can be used as a blue print for a real production environment, when permit is given

Key points

• Every part of the new infrastructure is reproducible
• Everything is under version control
• Commits have to be signed
• We provide git repositories, wikis and bug trackers to document everything
• We automate as many processes as possible
• Backups are done regularly
• Tested desaster recovery is mandatory - downtimes not longer than 8 hours max

These key points are non-negotiable

Tools

• ​guix to declare everything reproducible
• ​trac for wiki and bug tracking
• ​gitolite for fine-grained access control to our git repos
• ​libre software whenever possible - exceptions, e.g. firmware must be clearly justified

Recommended hardware

• 1 Server for CI / CD with 10 TB of storage space and at least 12 cores
• 1 Substitute server for binaries coming from CI / CD with 20 TB of storage space
• 1 Server to host gitolite repositories and trac installation
• 1 Computer for air gap data exchange
• Multiple developer machines

Personnel

• Two hardcore admins with high expertise in Guix, Containers and Linux in general
• Another two admins with enough knowledge to roll out predeclared systems and to do detailed bug reports

Time and money

• Hardware costs: below 10000 Euro without developer machines
• Time to train existing personnel: less than 3 months, if personnel already is motivated and has profound knowledge as admin