* Start adding utility libraries for interacting with the various
  componenents in the stack. So far very incomplete. These will be
  expanded over time and may become the basis of a library for
  provisioning the system

* Start adding tests, using `unittest` from the python standard library.
  This framework was chosen because it has no external dependencies and
  is available out-the-box on any Python installation. We can move to
  something more feature-complete in the future if needed.

* This commit contains mostly basic health-checks
  and a few create/read data tests. These will be expanded over time