Howdy,
Does anybody know if there exist a project(s) or effort(s)
to create a proper centralized management system for Linux?
None of current Linux (OSS) MGMT systems I've heard¹
or tried have not gone into the direction wich would
try to implement centralized installed software,
configurations and policies from database in MGMT station.
¹) can't claim that I have heard from all, propably.
I'm talking more about "Zero Adminstration" style solutions
than just bare installation time support tools like kickstart.
The idea in the MGMT-system is the ability to group hierarcially
systems (servers, workstations, etc) to the classes and
subclasses by the functionality of the server, department,
domain or whatever and the possibility to maintain and edit
single configuration in the tree view and let systems in classes
inherit these settings (installed program packages,
configurations and policies) to the whole tree unless it's
need to override some configurations locally under the host
settings.
The centralized class view with the proper reporting cabapilities
from SQL db, installation and update log files and with used
configurations version history the system would scale with ease
from the needs of departemental up to the large Enterprise level.
This kind of tools are becoming or already are very important to
many managing from few dozens of systems up to hundred or even
thousands of systems with ease and to be able to penetrate
mainstream corporate culture where every effort to keep systems
up to date and running smoothly is appreciated.
The key is not to bother the users of the systems with
administrative tasks but to be able to stay in control of
the situation from backgrund. Hence it is necessary to lift
the view from desktop oriented thinking to centralized view
which would provide the 'big picture' what's in the systems
now and enable the planning of the upgrades or new software
generally etc.
Thougths about the Management System operation:
Think client as of having a Red Hat Linux, where you just
drop in thin MGMT-agent software package, which by the first
time run would confirm the join to MGMT system and few
simple questions to configure what is the MGMT system
(a hint would be got from DNS SRV records or like) then
what is the shared secret etc.
After having configured the MGMT-agent daemon would connect
to MGMT over the SSL (XML-RPC preferrably) and get the rest
of the configuration and by the schedule defined there it
would start applying, installing new packages of software,
removing packages that were not defined to be part of this
configuration and copying configurations from MGMT-station
etc.
The existing package managers etc. tools in the system would
be used to pull in, verify the consistency, and install the
software like the up2date does. The agent would commit the
actions to local packet manager db and log file, but in additon
to centralized database and log files too so that the comparisons
between the systems centrally, doing difs and version reports
and possibly the version history would be acheivable.
The theory of the operation isn't really too hard. I know
it would be quite a bit of work designing the database and
creating the CLI/Web/GUI management tools, but AFAIK most of
the component pieces underneath and technologies are already
there. And better yet if it would be designed from the start
to support different (read supports evolution of) package
managers.
Any thougts or hints if anybody working on it for Linux already?
:-) riku
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