Linux Provisioning Systems - Posted by jpr to provisioning sysadmin linux on Thu Jan 11 2007 [@lab Bookmarks]
[phpwiki]
Came across an article today in [NetworkComputing| http://www.networkcomputing.com/channels/storageandservers/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=194300555&pgno=11] (of all places. nothing quite like boardom induced browsing) that caught my interest. I've been scratching my head for a while on how to manage the desktops, servers, and hpc systems in a reasonable way. The best way to do it is some ROCKSish like way, essentially having some configuration management tool. ROCKS and OsCaR are nice but a little too geared to the HPC cluster environment and don't seem adaptable to general purpose system administration with out a lot of cross platform (non-redhat) headache. I've toyed with the idea of roll my own via the grid but don't like the isolation of it.
The Linux provisioning systems article was interesting and discussed redhat network, novell zenworks and a roll-your-own from uwise cea. This last one was good because [that section| http://www.networkcomputing.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=164903414] basically covers the reality of the situation today. The tool they profile is [cfengine|http://www.cfengine.org/] and sounds useful and basically a whole lot like a scheduler targeted at maintaining system state. It would be interesting to learn more about cfengine and its use in admining the systems in the lab.
From the cfengine website, there is a [good but old article from 2001 in developer works|http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-cfe.html] and [cfengine tutorial from cfengine site|http://www.cfengine.org/docs/cfengine-Tutorial.html].
Some of what I've read seems strongly suggests that a generic scheduler could be used as the core instead of developing new listener daemons and the like. This really ties in with my on-going thoughts about how to admin the grid systems using the grid interfaces themselves. Maybe one could consider cfengine just a sysadmin metascheduler. ;)
