Normal Forms of Systems Administration
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@NerdyDad said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
@Dashrender said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
@NerdyDad said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
@scottalanmiller said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
@NerdyDad said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
@scottalanmiller said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
What about existing servers makes you locked into a GUI?
Not particularly looking at the servers themselves, but more of the applications running on the servers. Particularly in a Windows environment.
Totally understand being able to use bash for *nix environments and their different layers, either at the OS layer or at the program layer.
What applications do you find lack options for administration.
Example is that we left SW for SolarWinds Web Help Desk for our help desk and asset management. As far as I know, it is totally GUI and none of it is scripted, unless you are using their API. I have not yet gotten that far as to using the API at all unless I can just plug in API keys to get 2 applications to talk to each other.
How is it managed though? Through a GUI app on the server? Or a webpage?
Exchange for example has an app you can install on your remote machine and manage it completely through APIs...
Through a webpage. I guess I could manage it through the API if I really wanted to hate myself.
You don't need the API, you can just use the webpage from your PC. Now you are level 2. I.e. first normal.
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@matteo-nunziati said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
@scottalanmiller said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
Fifth Normal Form: "Fully Described State". No logins and no commands are used but rather all administration is done via a state machine.
an example in real world? I stick to the forth form, and I'm not aware of anything after that!
I've worked a few places that were fifth form. Examples would be systems fully defined in state files with something like Ansible or Chef. The admins never run commands on the servers, even remotely through arms length tools like Salt.
The state of systems is fully defined in code that you would expect to track in GIT or Mercurial. The systems are self managing via their state machines and descriptions. Systems totally build themselves.
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@scottalanmiller said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
@matteo-nunziati said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
@scottalanmiller said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
Fifth Normal Form: "Fully Described State". No logins and no commands are used but rather all administration is done via a state machine.
an example in real world? I stick to the forth form, and I'm not aware of anything after that!
I've worked a few places that were fifth form. Examples would be systems fully defined in state files with something like Ansible or Chef. The admins never run commands on the servers, even remotely through arms length tools like Salt.
The state of systems is fully defined in code that you would expect to track in GIT or Mercurial. The systems are self managing via their state machines and descriptions. Systems totally build themselves.
What size of companies have systems like this? Are these large enterprises with deep pockets or can an SMB do this as well?
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@NerdyDad said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
@scottalanmiller said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
@matteo-nunziati said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
@scottalanmiller said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
Fifth Normal Form: "Fully Described State". No logins and no commands are used but rather all administration is done via a state machine.
an example in real world? I stick to the forth form, and I'm not aware of anything after that!
I've worked a few places that were fifth form. Examples would be systems fully defined in state files with something like Ansible or Chef. The admins never run commands on the servers, even remotely through arms length tools like Salt.
The state of systems is fully defined in code that you would expect to track in GIT or Mercurial. The systems are self managing via their state machines and descriptions. Systems totally build themselves.
What size of companies have systems like this? Are these large enterprises with deep pockets or can an SMB do this as well?
Any size can do it. Companies with only one server probably aren't going to do this. But you don't need much to justify it if it makes sense for your environment and even shops with no servers and only desktops might make sense.
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Given current market options, one of the interesting things about fifth normal form is that it allows you to shift funds from tooling to staff. You can replace existing tooling with free tools while reducing staff headcount.
With fifth normal form is when we start to see densities change dramatically. It is in fifth normal form that we start to see the ability to manage thousands of systems per admin.
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@scottalanmiller said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
Given current market options, one of the interesting things about fifth normal form is that it allows you to shift funds from tooling to staff. You can replace existing tooling with free tools while reducing staff headcount.
With fifth normal form is when we start to see densities change dramatically. It is in fifth normal form that we start to see the ability to manage thousands of systems per admin.
So would XO be a Fifth normal form?
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Applying server techniques to desktops, we might make hundreds or thousands of desktops able to be managed by one person.
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@scottalanmiller said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
Applying server techniques to desktops, we might make hundreds or thousands of desktops able to be managed by one person.
What do I need to read/study/watch/learn to be able to implement something like this?
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@DustinB3403 said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
@scottalanmiller said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
Given current market options, one of the interesting things about fifth normal form is that it allows you to shift funds from tooling to staff. You can replace existing tooling with free tools while reducing staff headcount.
With fifth normal form is when we start to see densities change dramatically. It is in fifth normal form that we start to see the ability to manage thousands of systems per admin.
So would XO be a Fifth normal form?
No. First it isn't for systems but platforms. It doesn't manage systems at all. So slightly an aside. Platforms are a bit odd because typically you only have one system in an organization. If you had many disparate systems it would be quickly apparent that XO does not define by state. So it would be forth form.
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@NerdyDad said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
@scottalanmiller said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
Applying server techniques to desktops, we might make hundreds or thousands of desktops able to be managed by one person.
@scottalanmiller said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
Applying server techniques to desktops, we might make hundreds or thousands of desktops able to be managed by one person.
What do I need to read/study/watch/learn to be able to implement something like this?
For desktops I think that Salt is looking like the big potential winner. Native Windows support. Instant push of changes which is often needed with desktops. And it offers a "reach out" technology that means that even laptops behind firewalls keep working and are fully managed.
Going to fifth form can give you change control and LANless design all for "free".
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Why is nobody else talking about stuff like this?
Side note: Have you ever considered writing a textbook?
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@NerdyDad said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
Why is nobody else talking about stuff like this?
Because very few people cross between enterprise, DevOps public cloud and SMB space to put the pieces together.
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@NerdyDad said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
Side note: Have you ever considered writing a textbook?
The idea has been discussed
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Moving into the desktop realm, one of the biggest challenges is automated applications. Moving to repos makes this a lot smoother.
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@scottalanmiller said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
Moving into the desktop realm, one of the biggest challenges is automated applications. Moving to repos makes this a lot smoother.
A la chocolatey for Windows.
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So if 4th is strictly using RSAT... would 5th be full automation using SCCM, SCVMM, Orchestrator, and App Controller?
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@dafyre said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
@scottalanmiller said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
Moving into the desktop realm, one of the biggest challenges is automated applications. Moving to repos makes this a lot smoother.
A la chocolatey for Windows.
Right. That's definitely a good option. I've used Salt + Chocolatey for Windows desktop administration.
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@Tim_G said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
So if 4th is strictly using RSAT... would 5th be full automation using SCCM, SCVMM, Orchestrator, and App Controller?
Yes, I believe so. Those would be tools in the Microsoft toolset for that. They tend to take a very different approach than many of their competitors and it's been a while since I've used it. Not sure if SCCM goes all of the way to defined state or just really heavily automated forth form. But I think you can get to that state.
I believe it is properly state defined (fifth form) but not code defined like most of the alternatives.
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@scottalanmiller said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
@Tim_G said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
So if 4th is strictly using RSAT... would 5th be full automation using SCCM, SCVMM, Orchestrator, and App Controller?
Yes, I believe so. Those would be tools in the Microsoft toolset for that. They tend to take a very different approach than many of their competitors and it's been a while since I've used it. Not sure if SCCM goes all of the way to defined state or just really heavily automated forth form. But I think you can get to that state.
I believe it is properly state defined (fifth form) but not code defined like most of the alternatives.
I think I got lost in all the clutter... but why do you separate Remote GUI from Remote CLI ?
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@dafyre said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
@scottalanmiller said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
@Tim_G said in Normal Forms of Systems Administration:
So if 4th is strictly using RSAT... would 5th be full automation using SCCM, SCVMM, Orchestrator, and App Controller?
Yes, I believe so. Those would be tools in the Microsoft toolset for that. They tend to take a very different approach than many of their competitors and it's been a while since I've used it. Not sure if SCCM goes all of the way to defined state or just really heavily automated forth form. But I think you can get to that state.
I believe it is properly state defined (fifth form) but not code defined like most of the alternatives.
I think I got lost in all the clutter... but why do you separate Remote GUI from Remote CLI ?
Essentially "automatable interface" vs non-automatable interface. Not that GUIs cannot be automated, but effectively they cannot be.
