Finally, let's take a look at a more advanced configuration, better suited for deployment. Save this file as deployment.cfg, at the root of the buildout next to the main buildout.cfg file:

[buildout]
extends =
    buildout.cfg

parts =
    plone
    zope2
    productdistros
    deploymentproducts
    zeoserver
    primary
    secondary
    varnish-build
    varnish-instance

[deploymentproducts]
recipe = plone.recipe.distros
urls =
    http://plone.org/products/cachefu/releases/1.1/CacheFu-1.1.tgz
nested-packages =
    CacheFu-1.1.tgz
version-suffix-packages = 

[zeoserver]
recipe = plone.recipe.zope2zeoserver
zope2-location = ${zope2:location}
zeo-address = 8100

[primary]
recipe = plone.recipe.zope2instance
zope2-location = ${zope2:location}
zeo-client = true
zeo-address = 8100
zodb-cache-size = 5000
zeo-client-cache-size = 300MB
user = admin:admin
http-address = 8080
debug-mode = off
verbose-security = off
eggs =
    ${plone:eggs}
    ${buildout:eggs}
zcml = 
    
products =
    ${buildout:directory}/products
    ${productdistros:location}
    ${deploymentproducts:location}
    ${plone:products}

[secondary]
recipe = plone.recipe.zope2instance
zope2-location = ${zope2:location}
zeo-client = true
zeo-address = 8100
zodb-cache-size = 5000
zeo-client-cache-size = 300MB
user = ${primary:user}
http-address = 8081
debug-mode = on
verbose-security = on
eggs = ${primary:eggs}
zcml = ${primary:zcml}
products = ${primary:products}
zope-conf-additional =
    zserver-threads 1
    
[varnish-build]
recipe = plone.recipe.varnish:build
url = http://puzzle.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/varnish/varnish-1.0.4.tar.gz

[varnish-instance]
recipe = plone.recipe.varnish:instance
bind = 127.0.0.1:8082
backends = 127.0.0.1:8080
cache-size = 1G

Here, we are:

• Referencing the main buildout.cfg file, extending and overriding it with configuration more appropriate for deployment.
  
• Setting up a ZEO server with two client instances, primary and secondary (see plone.recipe.zope2zeoserver and plone.recipe.zope2instance for more details)
• Compiling the Varnish cache server (see plone.recipe.varnish for more details).

By combining buildout configuration files like this, you can create tailor-made configurations for different deployment scenarios. To learn more about the advanced features of buildout, see its documentation.

To build this environment, you must explicitly specify a configuration file:

$ ./bin/buildout -c deployment.cfg

To start Zope and Plone, you will need to start the ZEO server, the two clients (or at least, the primary one), and the Varnish server:

$ ./bin/zeoserver start
$ ./bin/primary start
$ ./bin/secondary start
$ ./bin/varnish-instance

The recipes will also create scripts to back up the ZODB (in ./bin/repozo) and to pack the database (in ./bin/zeopack).

Further options

zc.buildout is a very flexible system. It is relatively easy to create new recipes, and you can combine existing recipes in powerful ways. Search the Cheese Shop for "buildout" to find more recipes, or take a look at the source code for some of Plone's own recipes to understand how recipes are created.