I'm not so convinced it is that complex on a homogeneous OpenBSD
network. OpenBSD is a very manageable system, such as the entire OS
contained in compressed tarballs for easy extraction and the flexible
ports system. Both of these entities are easily scriptable. Then all
there is to worry about is system configs and custom binaries, which can
be easily managed by CVS. A hierarchal CVS structure can be built to
mange global (all nodes in network), group (groups of similar servers),
and single (things specific to a node, like /etc/myname) nodes. You
apply global settings first, overwriting with more specific settings.

For what it's worth, in our various environments (eg. testing,
production, development, etc., each with up to 45 or so servers
running mostly RedHat Advanced Server) as well as for other internal
services we've found CVS and a script to push modifications to
affected servers to perform fairly well. That said, to my knowledge no
one here has spent much time looking at cfengine or other
alternatives, but a move to such a system would probably be viewed
with (guarded) enthusiasm.

-Josh

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