Distelli simplifies physical, virtual and cloud software installations
Rahul Singh, founder of Distelli, stopped by to introduce his company. The problem that Distelli is trying to address is how to keep track of what's installed on each of an organization's industry standard x86-based physical, virtual or cloud-based systems and make it easily possible to deploy and update that software. Distelli is taking advantage of experience its founders had when putting together very large computing environments while at Microsoft and Amazon.
How it works
Distelli has developed an agent that can be downloaded to a system (physical, virtual or cloud), then a file containing the manifest of required software is pushed to that system and then applications, application frameworks, database engines and whatever else is needed can be pushed to the system using a command line interpreter or Distelli's web console.
As new software or a software update is needed, it can be deployed to a running server. Each update is identified by a unique ID and description that lists all of the required code, binaries or configuration files.
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Although this appears to be a fairly simple concept, it could be of great help to operations staff that is expected to manage complex computing environments. Manifest files could be developed for each application or service and then pushed out or updated as many times as needed. If an enterprise's IT infrastructure is made up of hundreds or thousands of systems, the process of installing and updating software could be vastly simplified. I expect the use of this tool would reduce the number of times "pilot error" would occur and important systems would go down.
Distelli isn't the only company to have seen this problem and come up with a solution. All of the major systems management software suppliers, such as BMC, HP, and IBM, offer something to address this challenge. Distelli, however, appears to be an extremely easy tool to learn and use. Busy operations and development staff members are much more likely to use a focused, simple tool that creates a more structured environment than a complex, but very powerful, tool.
Distelli is counting on the fact that its tool is very straightforward and easy in its competition with "the big dogs of the industry."