Hi,

I have already made a similar suggestion, although not a clear and succinct as yours and initially aimed more at an update/upgrade utility. I think there is definately merit in this idea, even if not as an upgrade facility but as a clean install facility (similar to say how eBox can be configured - either single purpose or comprehensive eBox server).

Another way to acomplish your aim (which is more what I'm gunning for) is a TKL VE (Virtual Environment) or "Master Server" which could either be installed virtually or on hardware which then has the various required TKL appliances (server components) installed within 'containers' (using technology such as OpenVZ or similar). This has a dual-edged appeal as it reduces hardware load associated with multiple VMs and also allows for a modular configuration which gives increased stability and the potential for redundancy. It also allows for developement and trialling of new products & ideas before having to commit your business to them. The other great thing is that if you mess something up completely and corrupt your LAMP webserver (for example) it doesn't bring your whole business to a standstill, only the functions that that individual VM was serving.

I am currently using Proxmox VE which I find brilliant and basically fulfills the "master server" role on my hardware (as defined above). For interests sake the hardware I am using is basically a mid to upper level 3 year old Desktop featuring an Intel Core2Duo (@ 2.13GHz) and 8GB of DDR2 RAM (you could probably buy similar brand new hardware for around $500-$600 currently). Proxmox also includes KVM so can host Windows and other OSs. It's great as a headless server (web based admin - I 'borrowed' my desktop vid card for initial install) and has impressive performance (as it is a minimal Debian install basically designed as a Hypervisor type environment). It is only availabe as x64 and is really intended for install to hardware but I have successfully installed it to both VMWare Server and VirtualBox (under Windows - for testing purposes only). I now have it running on my server as the primary OS, with all my TKL appliances running on top of that - currently 6 TKL VMs (soon to be more! - running in OpenVZ containers - see the wiki page here if that is a path you'd like to try), 1 Win Server 2K3 (under KVM - I hope to get rid of this once I can replicate its full functionality with TKL) and one Ubuntu Desktop (I use this for remote Admin, Log into this then admin all the other VMs using SSH, SFTP, Webmin, etc - This is also running under KVM, will run under OpenVZ when I get around to it).

Hope you find this idea as interesting as I do!

Cheers

And go from there! Perhaps TKL PDC? Then add the other functions.

Adding file sharing shouldn't be too involved (as the PDC sort of does that already - or perhaps thats my ignorance and someone can correct me?!) I would think its only a matter of reading up a bit on Samba (the underlaying tech for both PDC and File Server).

Then you would need to install Apache, MySQL and PHP (ie the AMP in LAMP).

From my quick glance at BackInTime is that its basically only a GUI for other functions:

Keep in mind that Back In Time is just a GUI. The real magic is done by rsync (take snapshots and restore), diff (check if something changed) and cp (make hardlinks).

So you are probably looking for something different (for starters TKL doesn't have a GUI to speak of - other than web-based). The Ubuntu Forums would be a good place to search and ask to find something that will suit your needs. There may be some backup software to achieve what you want already or perhaps someone has written a script to do the same as BackInTime in a server environment (which you could then run from cron).

Or perhaps you could read up on bash scripting and write one yourself and share it with us!?

IMNSHO having these Meta Appliances goes against the whole philosophy of having appliances in the first place. And, afterall, these Meta Appliances have been around for many years... They are called distros. The whole purpose of these appliances are that they are *role based* and easily set up in a federation with other *role based* appliances. You run a VM/appliance that serves up web pages/apps and you have a seperate appliance that handles mail. In a production environment you don't want the email server to become unavailable when you need to reboot the web server, and visa versa. You don't want to risk shutting down your PDC while you try out some configuration tweak on your wiki.

I think, when it comes to things like TurnKey appliances (and others of a similar ilk) that the old saying applies. "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should."