swampUP 2017 sessions | Artifactory Cluster as File Sharing Hub, Thomas Theakanath

Though Artifactory is primarily used as a repository for build artifacts, using its replication features, it could be used as a general-purpose platform for distributing variety of files needed across data-centers/cloud-regions for DevOps requirements.

The popular use of Artifactory is to integrate it with the the build process so the build artifacts will be available for deploying into multiple environments and for post-build uses such as building Docker images and AMIs later. However, Artifactory can manage any type of file and that could be leveraged to build a file sharing hub to facilitate the movement of files in a multi-data center/multi-region cloud environment.

The talk would cover these topics with related demo: - How a file sharing hub that spans multiple data centers is setup using the simple replication feature of Artifactory. - Describe use-cases of such a platform and the kinds of files managed, besides the build artifacts: configuration templates, raw data files for data systems, packages related to third-party applications, backup files etc. - Strategies to make the configuration management and orchestration tools location aware for downloading files from related Artifactory instance on the file sharing hub. Ansible will be used as the reference configuration management tool.