[Discuss] Patch/Server management software

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

I've got about 30 Linux servers (RHEL 5.9). I looked at Puppet. No one 
in our organization was using it, and it is only free for 10 notes, and 
I don't want to go through the additional paperwork to buy it
I currently use 2 tools
1. RHN Network Satellite. This keeps track of all the hosts I have 
registered with it, and the patch status. This does not help with CentOS 
hosts.
2. remote.tcl. This is a remote control script I wrote . It has a list 
of all my hosts along with check boxes. I have a button that can turn 
all the check boxes on or off. So, if I wanted to do a yum update on all 
the hosts, I click on all hosts, and the yum update button. I also have 
a command button where I can type most any LInux command. I also have 
logging capability. All the output is scrolled to a region so I can see 
what is going on. In my specific case all of my Linux systems are 
running the same versions. But, if I wanted to query any version, I 
could use my tool to do it. It would be very simple for me to parse the 
output and only display specific elements, It is not a more general 
purpose tool like Puppet.

I previously had some bash scripts that were designed to pull common 
versions of auto.direct, auto.home and a few other things, but that 
broke down when I started to have different security restrictions. My 
tcl/tk script does just about all I need it to do.
On 03/26/2013 11:51 AM, Matt Shields wrote:
> Love puppet for config management, but last time I used Puppet it was
> servers checking in to see what it should do not me seeing what needs
> to be updating and selectively updating what I want and when I want.
>
> Matt
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 11:14 AM, Drew Van Zandt
> <drew.vanzandt at gmail.com> wrote:
>> You mean something like Puppet or Chef?  Or something orthogonal to those
>> features?
>>
>> http://bitfieldconsulting.com/puppet-vs-chef
>>
>> Drew Van Zandt
>> Cam # US2010035593 (M:Liam Hopkins R: Bastian Rotgeld)
>> Domain Coordinator, MA-003-D.  Masquerade aVST
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 11:07 AM, Matt Shields <matt at mattshields.org> wrote:
>>> Anyone know of software that will give me a dashboard of my servers in
>>> my network, what software is installed on them, what software needs to
>>> be updated and let me target a remote update for those pieces of
>>> software.  Say for example there's an SSH update for my CentOS 5.6
>>> boxes, I hit one button and all those remote machines update that
>>> package.  Or there is a Windows update for IIS, again one button push
>>> tells those hosts to apply that update.
>>>
>>> Also, it would be ideal that this software would have a dashboard that
>>> can be used in our NOC to show threat level
>


-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id:3BC1EB90
PGP Key fingerprint: 49E2 C52A FC5A A31F 8D66  C0AF 7CEA 30FC 3BC1 EB90