How to bulk create many sites using one platform in Aegir

Question

I a plan to use Aegir (part of a BOA server) to host many sales sites, one site for one product.

I would like to know how to bulk-create 1000 sites using an existing platform in Aegir.

This apparently is not included in the Aegir handbook

If it may be more efficient, the other approach would be to clone 1000 sites from one existing site in Aegir.

I suppose that this can be accomplished either way using Drush, but how? It should use a list of domain names.

Answer 1

I've used software-as-a-service modules before to test this. This is what I use because I worked on/with these modules a lot so it's the most efficient route for me, but I don't think it would take anyone more than an hour to set up.

(This is a clone-based approach.)

Go to your hostmaster site and download the important modules:

drush dl hosting_variables hosting_saas
git clone --branch no-specifics https://github.com/PraxisLabs/hosting_restapi.git

Enable the modules, and set the site nid and platform nid in Hosting -> SaaS. (You can find the nid of a site or platform in the URL of their "edit" tab.)

Test the site creation with this bash command:

curl --data "url=test1.example.com&invoice=1" http://yourhostmasterurl/hosting/api/site

If this works, from there you can easily create 1000 sites with a simple bash script:

for ((i=2;i<=1000;i++));
do
   curl --data "url=test$i.example.com&invoice=$i" http://yourhostmasterurl/hosting/api/site
done

This would queue up clone creation for test2.example to test1000.example.com

Here's an article I wrote on using Aegir SaaS in production.

Alternatively, you can set up Hosting Services and use the REST API to queue up site creation tasks. I think this could take a few hours if you've never used it before.

Answer 2

Yes Drush is your friend here.

Examples from the import handbook and context import should be helpful.

There once was a feeds integration to create sites based uppon cvs or rss. But it has not been updated for Aegir 3.x.

Updates to the docs pages are always welcome ;)