With the work progressing, it's worth considering the deploying to production aspects, even if we don't know what the future of the team and maps will be. We want to avoid a flag day and any points of no return where we don't have a backout strategy.
Additional components to build
Both ClearTables and meddo require building. ClearTables needs python and python-yaml to build, which are both required by other components, and meddo requires some vector tile design software (e.g. kosmtik).
OSM database
The new work requires an osm2pgsql database loaded with the ClearTables osm2pgsql style. This is imported and updated with osm2pgsql, the same tool we already use, just different build. It requires about the same space as currently used (~650gb est).
The best way to deploy this would be to request a new servers, import to it, and everything is working, release the old ones to the hardware pool. If our operations setup can't do this, then we need to either import on the same machines using spare space, or take one of the existing machines, pull it out of production, and import on it.
An import will take 24-72 hours on reasonable hardware.
ClearTables is versioned, and anything we do will be based on a released version
Geoshapes
Right now my understanding is geoshapes is querying the rendering database. If so, we'll need to keep an osm2pgsql rendering database imported with the pgsql style around, but won't need the same capacity.
Other data
External shapefiles
These are loaded with a python script, and updated with the same script. It takes a few minutes to load, and a few minutes to update if the data has changed. The updating can be done while rendering is being done.
Borders
TBD - this involves running osmborder
Kartotherian
We can run the db -> vector and vector -> raster processes on the same machines by adding a second style to the Kartotherian config. The backout here is reverting the config change
Cached vector tiles
We will need to pre-render at least low zooms, so need vector tile storage of similar capacity to what we have right now.
Kartotherian
We should be able to make the raster tiles available on a different URL, and then test them. When ready, we can swap in the new name for the old name.