I'm wondering whether any of the experts here can provide any advice on the best way to set up a shared server to host multiple SilverStripe powered websites on a single server. We're already using named based virtual hosting, and my preference is to have a common core version of the Sapphire framework and the CMS directory, as well as other components that are commonly shared. However, hard drive space is cheap, and from what I've seen it might be easier and give us more flexibility to keep it all together and have n copies of Sapphire for each site.
The second aspect, beyond the deployment, is the management/ maintenance of sites on an ongoing basis. Through the use of the SVN:externals method, I'm wondering whether we can create our own repository for the 'mysite' content, and then tell via externals tell the SVN client when they do an update of the whole site, they should also check/update the Sapphire and CMS content from the main SVN repo.
Does anyone have any advice about this? I can see there are potentially a lot of pitfalls - particular as upgrades should be managed, with a minimum of surprises, as well as the Sapphire and CMS folders not really being "common", but instead being able to retain our own versions and configuring things as we like, only merging in changes in SS versions deliberately and occasionally - so any advice from the trenches would be much appreciated...