AQMS is the open source ANSS Quake Management System that wraps around the Earthworm software system. AQMS is a robust but complex set of software that requires many components to be correctly installed and configured for it to work properly. Recent advances in computing such as virtualization and automation have streamlined the build and installation procedures for software systems.
In this presentation we introduce a method to automate the installation of AQMS and its many dependencies. The core of this method uses Ansible, an automation framework developed by Red Hat. Installation tasks known as ‘plays’ are organized into ‘playbooks’ and combined to form ‘deployments’. The installation runs sequentially, and emulates how a human would perform an installation, but using plays designed to be repeatable yet non-destructive, a concept known as idempotence.
We discuss advantages of this methodology such as speed, accuracy, consistency, scalability, configurability and security. Highlighted methods cover configuration management using git, metadata updates, systems administration tools, and analyst resources. We also demonstrate how this project utilizes and supports the seismic communities open source projects.