A collection of links following a discussion led by webchick on dev list:

• http://drupal.org/project/patterns: Module/system configurations that can be run at any time
• http://drupal.org/project/hostmaster: Bryght's multisite hosting managed site deployment framework (using drush ?), which includes
  • http://groups.drupal.org/hm2/overview
  • http://groups.drupal.org/hm2/design-terminology
  • http://groups.drupal.org/hm2/project-goals
• http://drupal.org/project/hosting and http://drupal.org/project/provision
• http://drupal.org/project/drush: Command-line tool containing a bunch of useful commands such as running cron, downloading modules, etc.
• http://drupal.org/project/domain: “The Domain Access project is a group of lightweight modules that provide tools for running a group of affiliated sites from one Drupal installation and a single shared database.”
• http://drupal.org/project/dast>. It can use custom build files to do all kinds of things on the filesystem and DB. It supports lots of Drupal friendly stuff including modules installation and install profiles as well. It could certainly be configured to handle many multisite possibilities (link by mikey p)
• http://groups.drupal.org/node/7196: Mass hosting needs and existing solutions (wiki page on gdo) (link by nedjo)
• http://justice.dharmatech.org/websvn/listing.php?repname=adm&path=%2F&sc=0 SED scripts for Drupal
• dev to live:
  • http://drupal.org/project/autopilot: Migrate changes from dev to live
  • http://drupal.org/project/deploy: Migrate changes from dev to live (backed up by moshe weitzmann: “for moving content around, it seems that 'deploy' is most promising”)
  • http://drupal.org/node/181128
  • http://www.dave-cohen.com/node/1779
  • http://boston2008.drupalcon.org/session/updating-and-upgrading-live-sites / http://www.mikiane.com/node/2008/03/04/live-blogging-drupalcon-boston-2008 BOF session on the topic at Boston Drupalcon
  • http://jystewart.net/process/2007/02/using-capistrano-for-drupal-deployment/ : as an all purpose tool, ruby is only required on the source PC, not on all the target servers. (moshe weitzmann)

(this was a 2008 page)