What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?
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@travisdh1 said in What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?:
Ansible and salt are my first two choices.
These, for sure, are the top choices. Or just scripts if you want to keep it simple.
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@travisdh1 said in What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?:
Ansible and salt are my first two choices. Cockpit can work as well, but not as easily centrally managed.
I came across Ansible and Salt. As I remember both are Open Source.
Whether both are like Server-Client Architecture? Just install Server on some CentOS or Ubuntu and install Agents on the client machine? so can monitor, make changes, install software, run any updates etc. from server?
By the way, whether the servers are GUI?
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@openit said in What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?:
By the way, whether the servers are GUI?
Server = No Gui
But no, a GUI makes no difference. Same tools you use for managing desktops. A server with a GUI is still a server and none of the management would be done from the GUI.
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@openit said in What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?:
Whether both are like Server-Client Architecture?
Yes, that's how management has to be. Ansible focuses on a "reach in" architecture and Salt focuses on a "reach out."
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@travisdh1 said in What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?:
Ansible and salt are my first two choices. Cockpit can work as well, but not as easily centrally managed.
Fedora gets all the love when it comes to having the latest version of Cockpit too.
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@black3dynamite said in What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?:
@travisdh1 said in What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?:
Ansible and salt are my first two choices. Cockpit can work as well, but not as easily centrally managed.
Fedora gets all the love when it comes to having the latest version of Cockpit too.
Technically you could install the latest version of Cockpit on any distro.....
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@DustinB3403 said in What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?:
@black3dynamite said in What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?:
@travisdh1 said in What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?:
Ansible and salt are my first two choices. Cockpit can work as well, but not as easily centrally managed.
Fedora gets all the love when it comes to having the latest version of Cockpit too.
Technically you could install the latest version of Cockpit on any distro.....
Just because something may be supported, doesn't imply that it is support.
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@Obsolesce said in What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?:
@DustinB3403 said in What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?:
@black3dynamite said in What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?:
@travisdh1 said in What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?:
Ansible and salt are my first two choices. Cockpit can work as well, but not as easily centrally managed.
Fedora gets all the love when it comes to having the latest version of Cockpit too.
Technically you could install the latest version of Cockpit on any distro.....
Just because something may be supported, doesn't imply that it is support.
Aren't you funny, you can quote me.
They do say the greatest form of flattery is imitation.
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@DustinB3403 said in What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?:
imitation
But, that still doesn't imply that it is support.
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@DustinB3403 said in What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?:
@black3dynamite said in What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?:
@travisdh1 said in What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?:
Ansible and salt are my first two choices. Cockpit can work as well, but not as easily centrally managed.
Fedora gets all the love when it comes to having the latest version of Cockpit too.
Technically you could install the latest version of Cockpit on any distro.....
Of course we can use the source tarball. It just that Fedora makes it easier to keep up with the latest stable version.
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@openit said in What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?:
I came across Ansible and Salt. As I remember both are Open Source.
Early adopter of Salt bitd when folks were still foolish enough to trust the words coming out of Hatch's mouth. Since then they've spin doctored those promises and pretty much sold out the community lock, stock, and barrel. In 'twixt those times... Salt had the mother of all security fubars, something like over 30K servers compromised. Yeah, software vulnerabilities are going to happen. But ponder for just a moment, how many servers client servers were affected. Last I used, we had a couple thousand each per production, testing/staging, and dev environments. And that was small/medium enterprise. Shudder to contemplate the effect on the big boys.
Consequently I have lost all faith in Salt Stack. I always considered Ansible the weakest of the big three "FOSS" contenders but nowadays that would be my path. Or would it? Maybe IBM will visit some marketroid fun and games upon us, a'la Oracle style post Sun acquisition. Mayhaps Ansible has enough traction to survive a fork though.
Ah, we be livin' in interesting times, eh?
My $0.02. Caveat emptor.
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@gotwf said in What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?:
Last I used, we had a couple thousand each per production, testing/staging, and dev environments. And that was small/medium enterprise.
Were the production, testing/staging, and dev environments completely separated or were they integrated into each other? For instance running on the same server pools?
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@Pete-S Set up by others prior to my tenure but to best of my recollection it was a single well provisioned server. After the Chef rewrite they switched to Chef paid version cuz PHB's wanted all that gui goodness.
Prior to that I'd done some smaller Salt deployments that I engineered. Heh, back when you had to write your own formulas. I really liked Salt at the time. Also favored Python over Ruby. Just cuz. Neither would be a deal breaker for me but they definitely were for some dev shops so you just gotta roll with it.
Had another gig with a Chef deployment comparable to one mentioned above. This would have been prior to the rewrite/refactor. Chef definitely required more provisioning. While I liked Salt better you just get used to whatever and deal with it cuz those decisions were above my pay grade and more oft than not based on "buzz" than actual technical merit and/or evaluations. Crazy way to do business, eh?
Ansible is the one I never actually used beyond tinkering. I favor ROSS, or as close as I can come, so I'd be taking a long hard look at Ansible today. YAML is also preferable to Chef's DSL so that's another "win" for Ansible from my perspective. If you trust Salt security side, probably be my second choice. Caveat being that I've not used this stuff seriously in recent memory, so take all this w/a grain of salt. Heh, oohhh, two unintentional Salt Stack puns in a single sentence.
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How about https://spacewalkproject.github.io/ ?
Isn't it for multi-server management? but sounds project is dead?
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@openit said in What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?:
How about https://spacewalkproject.github.io/ ?
Isn't it for multi-server management? but sounds project is dead?
I believe was the upstream project for RedHat Satellite 5. RedHat Satellite 6 is current. Unfortunately, I have not had an opportunity to touch Satellite 6.
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@eddiejennings said in What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?:
@openit said in What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?:
How about https://spacewalkproject.github.io/ ?
Isn't it for multi-server management? but sounds project is dead?
I believe was the upstream project for RedHat Satellite 5. RedHat Satellite 6 is current. Unfortunately, I have not had an opportunity to touch Satellite 6.
Yeah Satellite 6 is a bunch of projects together. Katello, Formean, Candlepin, and Pulp. I never tried to get them working together manually. I used this project but that was years ago: https://github.com/theforeman/forklift
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@scottalanmiller said in What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?:
@openit said in What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?:
To manage CentOS, Ubuntu and Redhat linux servers, what do you use?
Do you recommend something like https://cockpit-project.org/ ?Cockpit is for managing one machine. It's a nice tool but.... doesn't address real management.
I wonder what do you mean by "for managing one machine"? I setup Cockpit, added multiple servers and I can manage all these servers individually from Cockpit.
If you are talking about "can't trigger a task on all servers connected on Cockpit", maybe yes, so far I can select one Server and manage it, but no action option for all Servers at a time.
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@openit said in What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?:
@scottalanmiller said in What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?:
@openit said in What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?:
To manage CentOS, Ubuntu and Redhat linux servers, what do you use?
Do you recommend something like https://cockpit-project.org/ ?Cockpit is for managing one machine. It's a nice tool but.... doesn't address real management.
I wonder what do you mean by "for managing one machine"? I setup Cockpit, added multiple servers and I can manage all these servers individually from Cockpit.
If you are talking about "can't trigger a task on all servers connected on Cockpit", maybe yes, so far I can select one Server and manage it, but no action option for all Servers at a time.
I was initially thinking the same thing, and cockpit is a great solution to administer an environment, but it's not an orchestration tool for an fleet of equipment.
Salt, Ansible, Chef and Puppet are all orchestration tools, to ensure the systems are doing what they need to.
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@openit said in What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?:
I wonder what do you mean by "for managing one machine"? I setup Cockpit, added multiple servers and I can manage all these servers individually from Cockpit.
Other than making a handle place to collect links to each machine, that's not managing them together in any way. It's managing them all completely individually. No different than if you just kept their individual links all in a text file somewhere.
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@openit said in What do you use to manage multiple Linux servers?:
If you are talking about "can't trigger a task on all servers connected on Cockpit", maybe yes, so far I can select one Server and manage it, but no action option for all Servers at a time.
Exactly. it's a great tool, but just for "snowflake" management.
