On 3/2/11 7:45 AM, "no-re...@cfengine.com" <no-re...@cfengine.com> wrote: > Neil, actually the entire phrase was "push button system provisioning and > management", and it usually means that you can create (if using VMs), install > from bare metal and configure a system with a single (maybe metaphorical) > "push of a button", so I would consider quite the opposite from manual > intervention (arguably you have to tell the system somehow, when you want a > new machine).
I've been sitting quietly, or trying to... FWIW, I've read their propaganda too (sorry, that's what I call marketing). I see areas where they would be useful, but mostly if you'd drank their Kool-Aid from the start. That is, they're really just another platform to use, and will require as much or more bootstrapping as cfengine. That's the real work... Building the "glue" which powers these features. We're 90% to "push button provisioning" today in that we built a management UI (one reason we're slow to adopt Nova) that offers not just inventory (though that's a nice feature) but monitoring and control. E.g. We click a link or hit a drop-down and classes are defined which cause cfagent to react. We would have been 99% already except for business decisions which caused us to rescope our design a couple times. With UCS pushing vmware adoption harder than ever, I imagine 2011 is the year. In my honest opinion, you can ultimately build this with almost any tool you pick... So pick a tool that meets your requirements, and not one that just touts how great the end result will be. > Some of the "big vendor" systems are actually quite nice, when they work and > if you have all the necessary resources. My main beef with most of them is > their size: they need big servers, with lots of memory and disk space, are > complex to install (most companies I have known normally just hire some vendor > to do it for them) and impose heavy configuration requirements (for example, > some need many ports open bidirectionally between the servers and the clients, > which I find unacceptable). Compared to cfengine's needs, it seems excessive. Remember when you were a NOC monkey, and "HP Open View" seemed so nice. Then you climbed the ladder and had to dig into the internals... Or maybe work with overpaid consultants to install it, and they never got it right either? Maybe you have a similar tale with Remedy? I and most of my friends do... I wonder why this is? Big companies with money to spend on marketing generate an image which is in no way based on the actual product. Warning. It's nothing new. Tread carefully, and test much. Bigger is not always better, quite the opposite in my experience (sorry ladies). > On the other hand, a big advantage many such systems have is a great body of > out-of-the-box knowledge about systems - they have huge libraries about how to > do different things in Windows, Solaris, AIX, HP/UX, Linux, etc. I'd argue the "body of knowledge" for such systems is often contract- or consultant-driven... Which can get costly. I personally prefer a real COMMMUNITY, which cfengine has been building for years. The COPBL and similar efforts could certainly grow into "a [library] about how to do different things [on different platforms]." It'll be fun to watch. > I of course favor cfengine, but many companies are swayed by pretty GUIs, and > have the (mostly erroneous) impression that more complex and more expensive > must somehow mean "better". Groundwork was a pretty GUI placed on top of OSS Nagios, and sold as a "solution" offering countless bells and whistles. Many of the bells and whistles did not work, and when we filed bugs we got shoved in a queue that took months or years to address our issues through releases. We just got done building our own Nagios management UI, replacing the $80k+/year required for Groundwork licensing...that's another head. Pretty GUIs are fine. Hire people that can build and document them. Then you get all the features you want and a development cycle you control. As usual, with any decision, first carefully consider the risks. PS: Also as usual, any opinions or bad humor in this post are entirely mine and not my employer's. ;-) _______________________________________________ Help-cfengine mailing list Help-cfengine@cfengine.org https://cfengine.org/mailman/listinfo/help-cfengine
