Re: [CentOS] managing a rack full of centos servers

2011-09-05 Thread James Nguyen
I'm managing two data centers and some instances on rackspace cloud servers.
 Currently running Cobbler+Puppet+Mcollective.  So far it's been great for a
team of one, myself.

At the moment I'm looking into either using Aeolus or Openstack to bridge
the gap of my data centers and the public cloud still keeping
Puppet+Mcollective in the mix and seeing if Cobbler is still needed.

Anyone out there tried both Aeolus *and* Openstack yet?  I'm looking
to supplement my research on these two private/public cloud tools. =)

On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 3:19 PM, Marian Marinov m...@yuhu.biz wrote:

 On Thursday 21 July 2011 18:36:17 Devin Reade wrote:
  --On Wednesday, July 20, 2011 11:02:42 PM -0700 RC cool...@gmail.com
 
  wrote:
   On Wed, 20 Jul 2011 10:07:06 -0600 Devin Reade g...@gno.org wrote:
   It should be considered as complementing the automated config
   management tools like cfengine et al, not as a replacement for
   them (they're doing different jobs).
  
   That's not entirely fair.  A little shell scripting and pdsh and pdcp
   can certainly do everything cfengine/puppet can do
 
  I wasn't referring to pdsh/pdcp; I was referring to pconsole.  The
  reason I said complementing is that sometimes it is good to have
  stuff under a configuration management system like cfengine/puppet,
  but sometimes you need to run ad-hoc commands, in an identical
  fashion, on lots of similar machines, which pconsole is good at
  (subject to the caveats I previously mentioned).
 
  I made no comments on pdsh/pdcp at all, and make no claims on where
  it fits in the spectrum.
 
  Devin
 
 You can actually achieve the same functionality of pdsh/pdcp and pconsole
 with
 a quite simple bash script :)

  http://multy-command.sourceforge.net/

 I think it is a matter of what the admin will prefer to do. When you have a
 lot of identical machines, sometimes it is better to have cfengine/puppet,
 but
 sometimes it just an overkill to use them if you are the only one
 administrating those machines.

 cfengine and puppet have a very good place on machines that are
 administered
 by a team of people.

 But solutions like pdsh/pconsole and multy-command, in my opinion are more
 suitable when there are only one or two guys administering those machines.


 Marian

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Re: [CentOS] managing a rack full of centos servers

2011-09-05 Thread Trey Dockendorf
On Sep 5, 2011 2:47 AM, James Nguyen ja...@callfire.com wrote:

 I'm managing two data centers and some instances on rackspace cloud
servers.  Currently running Cobbler+Puppet+Mcollective.  So far it's been
great for a team of one, myself.

 At the moment I'm looking into either using Aeolus or Openstack to bridge
the gap of my data centers and the public cloud still keeping
Puppet+Mcollective in the mix and seeing if Cobbler is still needed.

 Anyone out there tried both Aeolus *and* Openstack yet?  I'm looking
to supplement my research on these two private/public cloud tools. =)

 On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 3:19 PM, Marian Marinov m...@yuhu.biz wrote:

 On Thursday 21 July 2011 18:36:17 Devin Reade wrote:
  --On Wednesday, July 20, 2011 11:02:42 PM -0700 RC cool...@gmail.com
 
  wrote:
   On Wed, 20 Jul 2011 10:07:06 -0600 Devin Reade g...@gno.org wrote:
   It should be considered as complementing the automated config
   management tools like cfengine et al, not as a replacement for
   them (they're doing different jobs).
  
   That's not entirely fair.  A little shell scripting and pdsh and pdcp
   can certainly do everything cfengine/puppet can do
 
  I wasn't referring to pdsh/pdcp; I was referring to pconsole.  The
  reason I said complementing is that sometimes it is good to have
  stuff under a configuration management system like cfengine/puppet,
  but sometimes you need to run ad-hoc commands, in an identical
  fashion, on lots of similar machines, which pconsole is good at
  (subject to the caveats I previously mentioned).
 
  I made no comments on pdsh/pdcp at all, and make no claims on where
  it fits in the spectrum.
 
  Devin
 
 You can actually achieve the same functionality of pdsh/pdcp and pconsole
with
 a quite simple bash script :)

  http://multy-command.sourceforge.net/

 I think it is a matter of what the admin will prefer to do. When you have
a
 lot of identical machines, sometimes it is better to have
cfengine/puppet, but
 sometimes it just an overkill to use them if you are the only one
 administrating those machines.

 cfengine and puppet have a very good place on machines that are
administered
 by a team of people.

 But solutions like pdsh/pconsole and multy-command, in my opinion are
more
 suitable when there are only one or two guys administering those
machines.


 Marian

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 | 1.949.625.4263

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+1 for Puppet.  I manage only around 20 servers all running a mix of CentOS
5.6 and CentOS 6 very well with Puppet.  The initial configuration and
understanding for it is daunting but WELL worth it in the end.  Also for
system provisioning ( kickstart and pxe) look at Foreman, which uses Puppet
after initial installation.
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Re: [CentOS] managing a rack full of centos servers

2011-07-21 Thread RC
On Wed, 20 Jul 2011 10:07:06 -0600
Devin Reade g...@gno.org wrote:

 You get one master xterm, a bunch of slave xterms, and you can either
 type in the master to affect all nodes or selectively type in the
 slaves.

Yes, but I don't want a bunch of XTerms.  I can slide my phone open,
ssh in and manage my cluster using pdsh.  And I've written plenty of
serious scripts using pdsh/pdcp, which obviously wouldn't work with
XTerms popping up.

 It should be considered as complementing the automated config
 management tools like cfengine et al, not as a replacement for
 them (they're doing different jobs).  

That's not entirely fair.  A little shell scripting and pdsh and pdcp
can certainly do everything cfengine/puppet can do, and obviously more
that they can't.  Some of it may be a bit more clumsy this way, though
it has other advantages like being atomic so to speak, and not
lumbering around, slowly putting things in-sync.

I don't want to sound like a zealot by any means.  It's got plenty of
marks against it.  But it most definitely works, in some very demanding
circumstances, and it still hasn't become a problem, even as we keep
asking it to do ever-more.
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Re: [CentOS] managing a rack full of centos servers

2011-07-21 Thread John Hodrien
On Wed, 20 Jul 2011, m.r...@5-cent.us wrote:

 Two and a quarter years ago, I got stuck with Spacewalk where I had a
 short-term contract, and it was a horror. (Note that while I was working
 on it, it went from 0.4 to 0.5) As Iain said, it requires Oracle, and I
 found I had to add an addition setting to Oracle - the free version has a
 max of 1G of memory, and I had to max it out (I think I set shared memory
 in Oracle's control panel to 994M), just to get it to work. It's also
 complex to configure and use, so if you're not looking at dozens or
 hundreds of machines, I wouldn't use it.

It /did/ require Oracle, but it doesn't any more.  To be honest, getting it
working with Oracle was a piece of cake, and the 1G limit wasn't really an
issue as the active database isn't that big.  The 4Gbyte limit on database
size on disk with the XE edition /was/ an issue once you were managing a large
numer of machines.  The defaults that it ship with work fine, other than a
couple of values that can improve performance that are documented on the
spacewalk web site.

I've used spacewalk since 0.1, and it's really not that bad at all.  There's
bits of it I think could be better, but it's not the 'horror' you seem to
think it is.

jh
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Re: [CentOS] managing a rack full of centos servers

2011-07-21 Thread John Hodrien
On Wed, 20 Jul 2011, Patrick Lists wrote:

 On 07/20/2011 06:11 PM, Iain Morris wrote:
 Spacewalk is great, but be prepared for some significant configuration
 time and energy.  Also, it requires Oracle (postgres is in progress
 last I checked).

 From what I read the PostgreSQL support is functional for regular usage
 and has been improving significantly the last few releases. Worth a try
 if you don't want to fund Larry's next superyacht.

This is true, certainly 1.4 is almost completely working on PostgreSQL.
Monitoring is the only thing listed not to work with PostgreSQL on 1.5 (which
isn't quite out yet), but that's not the end of the world.

jh
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Re: [CentOS] managing a rack full of centos servers

2011-07-21 Thread Les Mikesell
On 7/19/11 6:43 PM, John R Pierce wrote:

 its looking like I might need to setup a deployment of a dozen or 2
 basically identical machines, all running pretty much the same sorts of
 stuff.  I have zero experience with the sorts of management tools folks
 use to automate this type of configuration, both initial setup, and
 ongoing management (system updates, user application updates,
 configuration changes, etc).

 anyone care to suggest any such tools, maybe some real-world pros and
 cons?   of course, being centos, I prefer FOSS tools.   for various
 reasons, this environment likely will NOT be virtualized (although I may
 emulate a test setup with vmware).

If the server hardware is really identical including disks of the same sizes, 
the fastest way to roll them out is probably clonezilla, which has the big 
advantage of being mostly agnostic toward the target OS.  You can try it out 
with the bootable iso, using sshfs or nfs to connect to network storage for the 
image.  If you like it, set up the drbl server to pxe boot into it.  It is rpm 
packaged, but I ended up using ubuntu on the server because it used to only use 
the server's kernel on the clients and I needed something newer than Centos 
provided for windows machines.  Now I believe you  can configure it to pxe boot 
the image from a current livecd even if you run it on a different server. 
Besides the ability to clone windows and other OS's, it also is good for 
snapshot backups of systems (if you can take them down for the copy) and it 
duplicates everything, including any local installs and config edits.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
lesmikes...@gmail.cm

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Re: [CentOS] managing a rack full of centos servers

2011-07-21 Thread Devin Reade
--On Wednesday, July 20, 2011 11:02:42 PM -0700 RC cool...@gmail.com
wrote:

 On Wed, 20 Jul 2011 10:07:06 -0600 Devin Reade g...@gno.org wrote:

 It should be considered as complementing the automated config
 management tools like cfengine et al, not as a replacement for
 them (they're doing different jobs).  
 
 That's not entirely fair.  A little shell scripting and pdsh and pdcp
 can certainly do everything cfengine/puppet can do

I wasn't referring to pdsh/pdcp; I was referring to pconsole.  The 
reason I said complementing is that sometimes it is good to have 
stuff under a configuration management system like cfengine/puppet,
but sometimes you need to run ad-hoc commands, in an identical 
fashion, on lots of similar machines, which pconsole is good at
(subject to the caveats I previously mentioned).

I made no comments on pdsh/pdcp at all, and make no claims on where
it fits in the spectrum.

Devin

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Re: [CentOS] managing a rack full of centos servers

2011-07-21 Thread Marian Marinov
On Thursday 21 July 2011 18:36:17 Devin Reade wrote:
 --On Wednesday, July 20, 2011 11:02:42 PM -0700 RC cool...@gmail.com
 
 wrote:
  On Wed, 20 Jul 2011 10:07:06 -0600 Devin Reade g...@gno.org wrote:
  It should be considered as complementing the automated config
  management tools like cfengine et al, not as a replacement for
  them (they're doing different jobs).
  
  That's not entirely fair.  A little shell scripting and pdsh and pdcp
  can certainly do everything cfengine/puppet can do
 
 I wasn't referring to pdsh/pdcp; I was referring to pconsole.  The
 reason I said complementing is that sometimes it is good to have
 stuff under a configuration management system like cfengine/puppet,
 but sometimes you need to run ad-hoc commands, in an identical
 fashion, on lots of similar machines, which pconsole is good at
 (subject to the caveats I previously mentioned).
 
 I made no comments on pdsh/pdcp at all, and make no claims on where
 it fits in the spectrum.
 
 Devin
 
You can actually achieve the same functionality of pdsh/pdcp and pconsole with 
a quite simple bash script :)

  http://multy-command.sourceforge.net/

I think it is a matter of what the admin will prefer to do. When you have a 
lot of identical machines, sometimes it is better to have cfengine/puppet, but 
sometimes it just an overkill to use them if you are the only one 
administrating those machines.

cfengine and puppet have a very good place on machines that are administered 
by a team of people. 

But solutions like pdsh/pconsole and multy-command, in my opinion are more 
suitable when there are only one or two guys administering those machines. 


Marian


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Re: [CentOS] managing a rack full of centos servers

2011-07-20 Thread Iain Morris
On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 6:00 PM, Fajar Priyanto fajar...@arinet.org wrote:
 On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 8:25 AM, Patrick Lists
 centos-l...@puzzled.xs4all.nl wrote:
 On 07/20/2011 02:03 AM, Fajar Priyanto wrote:
 Redhat satellite can handle it. Too bad I don't know if there is foss
 alternative for it.

 There is http://spacewalk.redhat.com/

 They have it? Awesome!
 Thanks for the info!!

Spacewalk is great, but be prepared for some significant configuration
time and energy.  Also, it requires Oracle (postgres is in progress
last I checked).  The free version of Oracle has a single processor
limitation.

I'd say about 20 systems is the threshold for when the up-front config
time starts paying off.

-- 
-- -
Iain Morris
iain.t.mor...@gmail.com
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Re: [CentOS] managing a rack full of centos servers

2011-07-20 Thread Devin Reade
--On Tuesday, July 19, 2011 08:45:54 PM -0700 cool...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Jul 19, 2011 6:48 PM, Jay Leafey jay.lea...@mindless.com wrote:
 
 I usually use SSH keys in conjunction with ClusterSSH

 In the same vein, I instead recomend pdsh.

Another variant that has been around a long time is pconsole.
http://freshmeat.net/projects/pconsole

This is a tool for executing the same command on many similar
machines at once, and doesn't require anything to be on the 
target machines other than ssh.  You get one master xterm, a
bunch of slave xterms, and you can either type in the master to 
affect all nodes or selectively type in the slaves.

It should be considered as complementing the automated config
management tools like cfengine et al, not as a replacement for
them (they're doing different jobs).  pconsole is more intended
for concurrent ad-hoc changes.

The only thing to keep in mind with pconsole is screen real-estate.
You can have your slave xterms small (like 40x4), but if you have
more nodes than you can get slave xterms on your screen at one time,
it's less effective.

Devin

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Re: [CentOS] managing a rack full of centos servers

2011-07-20 Thread m . roth
Iain Morris wrote:
 On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 6:00 PM, Fajar Priyanto fajar...@arinet.org
 wrote:
 On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 8:25 AM, Patrick Lists
 centos-l...@puzzled.xs4all.nl wrote:
 On 07/20/2011 02:03 AM, Fajar Priyanto wrote:
 Redhat satellite can handle it. Too bad I don't know if there is foss
 alternative for it.

 There is http://spacewalk.redhat.com/

 They have it? Awesome!
 Thanks for the info!!

 Spacewalk is great, but be prepared for some significant configuration
 time and energy.  Also, it requires Oracle (postgres is in progress
 last I checked).  The free version of Oracle has a single processor
 limitation.
snip
Two and a quarter years ago, I got stuck with Spacewalk where I had a
short-term contract, and it was a horror. (Note that while I was working
on it, it went from 0.4 to 0.5) As Iain said, it requires Oracle, and I
found I had to add an addition setting to Oracle - the free version has a
max of 1G of memory, and I had to max it out (I think I set shared memory
in Oracle's control panel to 994M), just to get it to work. It's also
complex to configure and use, so if you're not looking at dozens or
hundreds of machines, I wouldn't use it.

 mark

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Re: [CentOS] managing a rack full of centos servers

2011-07-20 Thread Eero Volotinen
2011/7/20  m.r...@5-cent.us:
 Iain Morris wrote:
 On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 6:00 PM, Fajar Priyanto fajar...@arinet.org
 wrote:
 On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 8:25 AM, Patrick Lists
 centos-l...@puzzled.xs4all.nl wrote:
 On 07/20/2011 02:03 AM, Fajar Priyanto wrote:
 Redhat satellite can handle it. Too bad I don't know if there is foss
 alternative for it.

 There is http://spacewalk.redhat.com/

 They have it? Awesome!
 Thanks for the info!!

 Spacewalk is great, but be prepared for some significant configuration
 time and energy.  Also, it requires Oracle (postgres is in progress
 last I checked).  The free version of Oracle has a single processor
 limitation.
 snip
 Two and a quarter years ago, I got stuck with Spacewalk where I had a
 short-term contract, and it was a horror. (Note that while I was working
 on it, it went from 0.4 to 0.5) As Iain said, it requires Oracle, and I
 found I had to add an addition setting to Oracle - the free version has a
 max of 1G of memory, and I had to max it out (I think I set shared memory
 in Oracle's control panel to 994M), just to get it to work. It's also
 complex to configure and use, so if you're not looking at dozens or
 hundreds of machines, I wouldn't use it.

Oracle named user license is very cheap ..

--
Eero
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Re: [CentOS] managing a rack full of centos servers

2011-07-20 Thread Patrick Lists
On 07/20/2011 06:11 PM, Iain Morris wrote:
 Spacewalk is great, but be prepared for some significant configuration
 time and energy.  Also, it requires Oracle (postgres is in progress
 last I checked).

 From what I read the PostgreSQL support is functional for regular usage 
and has been improving significantly the last few releases. Worth a try 
if you don't want to fund Larry's next superyacht.

Regards,
Patrick


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Re: [CentOS] managing a rack full of centos servers

2011-07-20 Thread John R Pierce
On 07/20/11 10:12 AM, Eero Volotinen wrote:
 Oracle named user license is very cheap ..

but if you read the license, every single node that generates data is 
considered a 'user', even if it goes through a webservice or other form 
of 'data concentrator' and doesn't directly connect to SQL.



-- 
john r pierceN 37, W 122
santa cruz ca mid-left coast

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Re: [CentOS] managing a rack full of centos servers

2011-07-19 Thread William Warren
On 7/19/2011 7:43 PM, John R Pierce wrote:
 to date, I've done all my administration on a manual 1 at a time basis,
 as each system has been pretty much unique.

 its looking like I might need to setup a deployment of a dozen or 2
 basically identical machines, all running pretty much the same sorts of
 stuff.  I have zero experience with the sorts of management tools folks
 use to automate this type of configuration, both initial setup, and
 ongoing management (system updates, user application updates,
 configuration changes, etc).

 anyone care to suggest any such tools, maybe some real-world pros and
 cons?   of course, being centos, I prefer FOSS tools.   for various
 reasons, this environment likely will NOT be virtualized (although I may
 emulate a test setup with vmware).



webmin is a good free option depending on your admin needs.
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Re: [CentOS] managing a rack full of centos servers

2011-07-19 Thread Fajar Priyanto
On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 7:43 AM, John R Pierce pie...@hogranch.com wrote:
 to date, I've done all my administration on a manual 1 at a time basis,
 as each system has been pretty much unique.

 its looking like I might need to setup a deployment of a dozen or 2
 basically identical machines, all running pretty much the same sorts of
 stuff.  I have zero experience with the sorts of management tools folks
 use to automate this type of configuration, both initial setup, and
 ongoing management (system updates, user application updates,
 configuration changes, etc).

Redhat satellite can handle it. Too bad I don't know if there is foss
alternative for it.
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Re: [CentOS] managing a rack full of centos servers

2011-07-19 Thread Giovanni Tirloni
On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 8:43 PM, John R Pierce pie...@hogranch.com wrote:

 to date, I've done all my administration on a manual 1 at a time basis,
 as each system has been pretty much unique.

 its looking like I might need to setup a deployment of a dozen or 2
 basically identical machines, all running pretty much the same sorts of
 stuff.  I have zero experience with the sorts of management tools folks
 use to automate this type of configuration, both initial setup, and
 ongoing management (system updates, user application updates,
 configuration changes, etc).

 anyone care to suggest any such tools, maybe some real-world pros and
 cons?   of course, being centos, I prefer FOSS tools.   for various
 reasons, this environment likely will NOT be virtualized (although I may
 emulate a test setup with vmware).


You might want to look at automation tools like Puppet, Chef or Cfengine (in
no particular order).

-- 
Giovanni Tirloni
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Re: [CentOS] managing a rack full of centos servers

2011-07-19 Thread Patrick Lists
On 07/20/2011 02:03 AM, Fajar Priyanto wrote:
 Redhat satellite can handle it. Too bad I don't know if there is foss
 alternative for it.

There is http://spacewalk.redhat.com/

Or check out:

http://pulpproject.org/
https://fedorahosted.org/candlepin/
http://theforeman.org/  (or look at https://fedorahosted.org/cobbler/ )

The above managed from: http://www.katello.org/

And then there's also for the Cloud:
https://www.aeolusproject.org/

And off course the workhorse:
http://www.puppetlabs.com/

Regards,
Patrick
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Re: [CentOS] managing a rack full of centos servers

2011-07-19 Thread David Lemcoe
Spacewalk is the free alternative to Satellite, and is pretty dang awesome
if you ask me.

On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 8:25 PM, Patrick Lists 
centos-l...@puzzled.xs4all.nl wrote:

 On 07/20/2011 02:03 AM, Fajar Priyanto wrote:
  Redhat satellite can handle it. Too bad I don't know if there is foss
  alternative for it.

 There is http://spacewalk.redhat.com/

 Or check out:

 http://pulpproject.org/
 https://fedorahosted.org/candlepin/
 http://theforeman.org/  (or look at https://fedorahosted.org/cobbler/ )

 The above managed from: http://www.katello.org/

 And then there's also for the Cloud:
 https://www.aeolusproject.org/

 And off course the workhorse:
 http://www.puppetlabs.com/

 Regards,
 Patrick
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Re: [CentOS] managing a rack full of centos servers

2011-07-19 Thread Peter Brady
On 20/07/11 10:30 AM, David Lemcoe wrote:
 Spacewalk is the free alternative to Satellite, and is pretty dang
 awesome if you ask me.

+1 for spacewalk.  I use it in combination with kickstarts (have not
fiddled with the cobbler/PXE provisioning interface yet) to rollout
identical deployments for HPC grids.  Then manage patches and updates
via spacewalk.

Cheers
-pete



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Re: [CentOS] managing a rack full of centos servers

2011-07-19 Thread Fajar Priyanto
On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 8:25 AM, Patrick Lists
centos-l...@puzzled.xs4all.nl wrote:
 On 07/20/2011 02:03 AM, Fajar Priyanto wrote:
 Redhat satellite can handle it. Too bad I don't know if there is foss
 alternative for it.

 There is http://spacewalk.redhat.com/

They have it? Awesome!
Thanks for the info!!
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Re: [CentOS] managing a rack full of centos servers

2011-07-19 Thread Les Mikesell
On 7/19/11 6:43 PM, John R Pierce wrote:
 to date, I've done all my administration on a manual 1 at a time basis,
 as each system has been pretty much unique.

 its looking like I might need to setup a deployment of a dozen or 2
 basically identical machines, all running pretty much the same sorts of
 stuff.  I have zero experience with the sorts of management tools folks
 use to automate this type of configuration, both initial setup, and
 ongoing management (system updates, user application updates,
 configuration changes, etc).

 anyone care to suggest any such tools, maybe some real-world pros and
 cons?   of course, being centos, I prefer FOSS tools.   for various
 reasons, this environment likely will NOT be virtualized (although I may
 emulate a test setup with vmware).


It doesn't take that much time to manage a server.  For a dozen or two you 
probably can't save enough time to be worth setting up anything more than ssh 
keys on one that you use for management and a couple of scripts that loop over 
them to do things like 'ssh  $host yum -y update that you might do 
frequently. 
  For more ad-hoc things you can just open a bunch of terminal windows ssh'd to 
each and paste in the commands.

For the install you can copy the kickstart file that the first install creates 
to a web server and use it to duplicate the setup on the others.  You might 
want 
something like backuppc to keep a history of recent copies of at least /etc and 
anywhere else you have modified files.  If you do any complicated programming 
or 
scripting, you'll probably want subversion or some other version control system 
to manage the revisions.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
lesmikes...@gmail.com
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Re: [CentOS] managing a rack full of centos servers

2011-07-19 Thread Jay Leafey
I usually use SSH keys in conjunction with ClusterSSH 
(http://clusterssh.sourceforge.net), I have been using the 3.27 version 
with good results.  It makes managing batches of servers a bit easier, 
allowing the execution of the same command across multiple systems at 
the same time.

--
Jay Leafey - jay.lea...@mindless.com
Memphis, TN


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Re: [CentOS] managing a rack full of centos servers

2011-07-19 Thread cooleyr
On Jul 19, 2011 6:48 PM, Jay Leafey jay.lea...@mindless.com wrote:

 I usually use SSH keys in conjunction with ClusterSSH (
http://clusterssh.sourceforge.net), I have been using the 3.27 version with
good results.  It makes managing batches of servers a bit easier, allowing
the execution of the same command across multiple systems at the same time.

In the same vein, I instead recomend pdsh.  It has a few quirks which
increases the learning curve, but it works very, very well, assuming that's
the level of control you want/need.
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