Here comes CTL -- a new automation tool with deep roots

We're happy to announce the initial release of our latest project, CTL.

What is CTL?
CTL is a flexible distributed control dispatching framework that enables you to break management processes into reusable control modules and execute them in distributed fashion over the network.

What does CTL do?
CTL helps you leverage your current scripts and tools to easily automate any kind of distributed systems management or application provisioning task. Its good for simplifiying large-scale scripting efforts or as another tool in your toolbox that helps you speed through your daily mix of ad-hoc administration tasks.

What are CTL's features?
CTL has many features, but the general highlights are:

* Execute sophisticated procedures in distributed environments - Aren't you tired of writing and then endlessly modifying scripts that loop over nodes and invoke remote actions? CTL dispatches actions to remote controllers with network transparency (over SSH), parallelism, and error handling already built in.

* Comes with pre-built utilities - CTL comes with pre-built utilities so you don't have to script actions like file distribution or process and port checking.

* Define your own automation using the tools/languages you already know - New controller modules are defined in XML and your scripting can be done in multiple scripting languages (Perl, Python, etc.), *nix shell, Windows batch, and/or Ant.

* Cross platform administration - CTL is Java-based, works on *nix and Windows.

What is CTL's relationship to other ControlTier projects?
AntDepo and CTL share the same code roots. CTL is a re-factoring and enhancement of the original AntDepo code base. While AntDepo is primarily used as a component within the larger ControlTier Application Service Provisioning System, CTL is designed to be fully usable as a standalone tool.

In the future, CTL will replace AntDepo within the ControlTier Application Service Provisioning System.

If you are new to ControlTier's automation tools, CTL is definitely where you want to start.

As always, please jump on the mailing list to tell us what you think, ask questions, or provide feedback. We always love hearing from our users (seriously!).

EDIT:
1. For more information about the motivation behind the CTL tools, check out this post on the dev2ops.org blog.

2. All information on how to use CTL can now be found on the ControlTier Wiki.