Disnix: A toolset for distributed deployment

The process of deploying a distributed system in a network of machines is often very complex, laborious and time-consuming, while it is hard to guarantee that the system will work as expected and that specific non-functional deployment requirements from the domain are supported. In this paper we describe the Disnix toolset, which provides system administrators or developers with automatic deployment of a distributed system in a network of machines from declarative specifications and offers properties such as complete dependencies, atomic upgrades and rollbacks to make this process efficient and reliable. Disnix has an extensible architecture, allowing the integration of custom modules to make the deployment more convenient and suitable for the domain in which the system is to be used. Disnix has been under development for almost four years and has been applied to several types of distributed systems, including an industrial case study.