When an animation studio is getting in on the open source movement you — definitely — know it’s a sign of the times. Walt Disney’s IT Admins have built a new application called Reposado and released it on GitHub for the masses.
Reposado replicates Mac OS X Server’s Software Update services, letting admins download updates once, and then push out the updates locally, instead of forcing all machines to head to the cloud at the same time.
But wait, it gets better. Reposado also keeps older software versions in play, unlike Apple. Apple’s update servers remove older versions of software when new versions become available. Reposado on the other hand keeps copies of both new and old versions.
While most of you are probably disregarding the contents of this post because it doesn’t apply to you, stick around for a second.
As more and more devices find their way into homes, and as bandwidth costs continue to rise, having access to something like Reposado on your home network could save you a ton of bandwidth. In my home I have 4 Macs, all of which needed the 10.6.7 software update. Using Software Update resulted in downloading 1.9 GB of data when Apple issued the patch, the equivalent of streaming one HD movie from Netflix. You can see how quickly these things add up, especially if you have to patch systems more than once a month. Reposado will download the software once from Apple’s servers, then use your local network to patch the other computers. In my case that would result in 1.42 GB of data saved.
It’s worth it, if you know what you’re doing.
Also, we should quickly point out that early Lion rumors had Apple releasing Lion Server for free on the same disk as OS X Lion. We haven’t heard much more on this rumor since those original rumors, but if it turns out to be true, you could also use OS X Server to duplicate the functionality of Reposado.
You can check out Reposado on GitHub.
Article Via TUAW
