We've previously covered N1 SPS (Service Provisioning System). This new article goes into much greater details about how such a solution and specifically its application server plug-in can help in your larger-scale multi-tier deployment scenarios. The article specifically goes into what a master server and a remote agent are, how a local distributor can help optimize network and firewall communications, how the concept of a component maps to a GlassFish domain or cluster, and how a plan is really a set of instructions requiring a set of variables to be executed. Running a plan can be done as "preflight only" or for real "deployment".

You'll learn how N1 SPS can provision existing installations of GlassFish v2 or carry out entire installations and deployments of SJS Application Server 9.1. This product is really meant for the provisioning of multi-tier deployments. For instance, it lets you install the load-balancing plug-in in the web server tier or manage HADB installation and node management.

The N1SPS 6.0 Application Server (GlassFish v2) Plugin has now been released. The plugin can be downloaded from N1SPS, Get It page. This previous post has a short introduction about when to use N1 SPS for Application Server deployments. The value of such a provisioning tool also comes from its ability to work with multiple products and deploy a complete multi-tiered architecture. You may be interested in reading this customer testimonial from PixelPark. The title alone for this article should get your attention: "IT service company reduces application deployment time by 97 percent".

Read more from these other entries:
•  Application Server N1SPS Plugin - Blogs and Resources
•  Mission Complete - N1SPS 6.0 Application Server Plugin Launched!
•  Using N1SPS in GlassFish V2 Enterprise Environment
•  Installation of High Availability DataBase with N1 Service Provisioning System
•  Provisioning GlassFish V2 with N1SPS (Part 2) - Automation
•  Installation of Load Balancer Plugin with N1 Service Provisioning System

No matter how many efforts the team has put into making managing GlassFish v2 deployments easier, there will always be a point where some users (service providers or anyone else doing massive deployments) would like some extra help. This is where the N1 Service Provisioning System comes to the rescue. The idea is to help manage hundreds of hosts spread across many geographic locations (see demo) by provisioning the software - describing it once, deploying it many times. Installing the bits, configuring the product (creating resources), and deploying applications to it can all be taken care of by N1 SPS. This same product can provision just about anything else your architecture requires - database, web servers, etc... Prasanth has a two-blog series on the support of Sun Java System Application Server (GlassFish v2) from within this provisioning software. The first one defines what plans, components, variable sets, and plugins are and specifically described the Sun Application Server 9.1 plugin. The second one covers the scriptable (N1SPS CLI) part of the provisioning.

This N1 SPS plugin supports not only SJS Application Server 9.1, but also SJSAS 8.2 (part of Java Enterprise System 5) and SJSAS 8.1 (part of Java Enterprise System 4). Version 6.0 of the plugin is due to be released on 10/04/07.

Update: Sreeni has a blog post on that very same topic.