All you need is Capistrano and an account on the deploy machine. This can be used and extended to deploy to several servers (also at once), move databases around, etc. The gain is that you don't need to login to the server. We can talk about that interesting technique tomorrow.
Unfortunately, while Capistrano is all easy to use with Rails, I had to write a custom Drupal-tailored Capfile.
The hostmaster profile ties together the functionality of the hosting front end and provisioning back end into a complete package. It handles initialization and auto-detection of your initial configuration settings, and directs you to the friendly installation wizard.
Using CVS to maintain a Drupal website
SysCP, the System Control Panel is a server administration tool which enables an internet service provider to give their customers a web-based application to administrate their email addresses, their subdomains etc.
