[Smartfrog-users] Opinions wanted: Is smartfrog the right framework for my osgi-based system?

[Stanley C. B. <st...@gl...>]

I am one day into learning how to use smartfrog on my home network (fedora12
+ mac osx platforms).   So far so good.

But I want to know how --* or if *-- smartfrog should be used to install and
configure non-jar artifacts such as db server distributions, hadoop
distributions, solr distributions, and standalone eclipse-osgi products,  on
remote linux servers running smartfrog daemons.

If I am not misinterpreting the docs, I *could*:

1.  Use "cluster ssh" to install a jdk or jvm, smartfrog, and start the
sf-daemon on each target linux host.

2.  Use smartfrog to deploy and run bash scripts which download and install
db distributions (via yum),  edit db configuration files,  ceate db users /
schemas / tables, and issue startup & shutdown commands.

3.  Use smartfrog to deploy and run bash scripts which install cloudera.repo
files, then install cloudera's hadoop / hbase / zookeeper distributions (via
yum),  edit configuration files, and issue startup & shutdown commands.

4.  Use smartfrog to deploy and configure a solr cluster.  (There is no yum
pkg for solr, to my knowledge.  Can I use smartfrog to deploy & run a bash
script which scp's, extracts, and configures gzipped solr distributions on a
cluster of solr servers?)

5.  Deploy and manage the dependencies and lifecycles of all of my system's
OSGi components -- standalone product launchers on top of dozens of plugins.

Does this seem reasonable?  My entire system is implemented in java, and for
this reason I chose to look at smartfrog first, before bcfg2 or puppet.  But
this is an OSGi based system, not J2EE, and I will be deploying (then
extracting) gzipped eclipse products, not jars.
Also, the OSGi bundles are started from native product launchers -- again,
not java jars.

And I intend to run system / scalability tests on EC2.

I see smartfrog's advantages when all the java components are up and
running, but is smartfrog the right tool for managing the remote
installation and configuration of all these subsystems?  I don't know... I
would really appreciate some feedback.

Thanks,
Stan