This sounds like an interesting project and we’d like to help you out in any way that we can. If this is something you’re interested in please drop us a line!

Regards,
Amanda

It occurs to me that we could just as easily pull back this discussion, and talk about various virtualization options for digital humanists/computer scientists/librarians. Things like virtualbox, for instance. We could use our time to explore several related technologies. I’m happy to do that, too.

The essence of a StackScript is just a shellscript. So some parts may be used on local hardware. But the beauty of a StackScript is you roll it out at the point of a server build with as much specificity as you desire.

Linode describes it like this: www.linode.com/stackscripts and like this: library.linode.com/stackscripts

The general idea isn’t a new one. For instance, here is something similar via Amazon Web Services: academicami.org/ with credit to James Smithies (jamessmithies.org).

StackScripts, however, are particular to linode.com.

There are three things I especially like about them.

One – you have the option to try to mimic your campus IT infrastructure (presuming it’s Linux), while you get everything the way you want it. Then, it’s very easy to package up your creation for delivery to your in-house IT to put in place. Linode’s management UI makes this a matter of a couple clicks.

Two – the potential to utilize User Defined Fields within a StackScript. This is the real beauty, I think, for project owners with some but limited systems expertise. A community of practice can develop StackScripts in support of a particular technology or collection of technologies (i.e,. stack).

These scripts’ User Defined Fields can then prompt upon deployment for salient information particular to you and your project. Linode gives a pretty good example of what is possible in this LAMP StackScript here:

www.linode.com/stackscripts/view/?StackScriptID=939.

Within, you are prompted to provide SSH publickey information, and configure a firewall.

Three – you can reference other StackScripts from within a StackScript. So, perhaps you like the LAMP deployment someone else has written, but you want to drop DRUPAL ontop, You call one StackScript from your own, and augment it with the extra stuff you desire. The example above actually calls two other StackScripts in this way.

This is a very different concept from a hosting provider’s control panel (e.g., Fantastico).
It’s much more powerful than, say, a site like SimpleScripts (www.simplescripts.com) that dictates system requirements and pre-determines which versions of various applications will be installed.

I’ve not found anything exactly like it offered by the other VPS companies I know about.

Hopefully others will find this as interesting as I do. Again, I’m more than willing to change to another type of session – maybe one that surveys VPS hosting options, as well as software live virtualbox, etc.

Very happy to attempt to answer other questions!