On Sun, 2007-11-11 at 10:46 -0800, Daniel Qarras wrote: > Hi all, > > this must have been discussed before but I can't find a clear answer > with Google so here it goes: > > In large corporate/enterprise environments with hundreds or thousands > workstations and laptops a centralized management tool is a must and > any home-made scripting solution hacked by those two geeks working in > the basement is too fragile solution so something proven and tested > would be needed. All this stuff, whether corporate or Linux or even budding new OS's are written by Geeks. Where they work, and how much they get paid and by whom has very little impact on value. Testing I will admit has value, but only if the inherent code is worthwhile, and that is as likely to come out of a basement (perhaps more so than from a cubicle farm) since the folks working on it have a vested self interest in the actual code. To post such a comment on a list of principally users, hackers and developers makes you seem surprisingly unaware of the environment here. > > For RHEL there's RHN/Satellite Server (1) which probably works, for > Ubuntu there's Blueprint (2) coming, but is there anything that would > support at least a mixture of Fedora/CentOS installations and is > available free (in all meanings, ruling Satellite Server out)? Probably > something like Yum + Cfengine could be bended to do most of the work > but as said having a home made system for managing thousands of systems > doesn't sound a bright idea. And just going 100% to RHEL is not always > a solution as many developers will get benefits by using tools present > in Fedora but not in RHEL and some hardware (especially laptops) are > hard to get running without using the latest distro available. > > Below is a list I imagine that would be needed, most of these are from > the Ubuntu Blueprint's requirements: > > 1. Automatic upgrade to a particular version of selected packages > 2. Kickstart new client machine with the appropriate version of Ubuntu > (specific to a hardware configuration and role) with all the associated > packages selected by the IT department of the company > 3. Ability to change configurations and rules (including firewalls et > al) centrally and push them to the client machines > 3a. Ability to execute remote commands on a given set of clients > 4. Monitor and record list of packages installed in a laptop or > workstation > 4a. Any abnormal status reported by e-mail or others means to admins > 6. Stagger the updates and upgrades so that all machines do not suck-in > bits at the same time > > So if anyone has suggestions or even experiences with a tool to handle > these kinds of tasks in large environments it would very interesting to > hear about them! > There are several folks here with considerable experience in servers and server configuration. Many if not most use custom scripts because virtually every server setup is unique, depending on the legal requirements from HIPIAA, to EU regulations, to SOX, to asia concerns, to the specific needs of China and other such countries. Thus Server configuration, storage and storage access, record keeping and related logging are all dependent on more than just technical issues. Additionally it appears to me that everything you have listed is already available in Fedora, and given the design philosophy of Linux, custom scripting of small tools that do one job well is the means by which such setups are done, a kind question to some of the "geeks in basements" might well get you help to acquire just what you need. > 1) https://www.redhat.com/rhn/ > 2) > https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/enterprise-management-features > Regards, Les H
